U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday called up Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University law student who Rush Limbaugh called a slut and prostitute, to thank her for speaking out on the issue of access to contraception.

Fluke was scheduled appear on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports when Obama called her phone. She ended up taking the call as she waited in the green room, according to the Huffington Post.

He encouraged me and supported me and thanked me for speaking out about the concerns of American women, Fluke told Mitchell. What was really personal for me was that he said to tell my parents that they should be proud. And that meant a lot because Rush Limbaugh questioned whether or not my family would be proud of me. So I just appreciated that very much.

Fluke tried to testify last month at a congressional committee hearing on the Obama administration's new rule that requires employers to cover birth control on their health plans. However, she was not included on the panel and instead, testified at a hearing set up by Democratic lawmakers.

In that hearing, Fluke was an advocate for the new policy. She also said a friend of hers lost an ovary because of lack of contraceptive care, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.

When you let university administrators or other employees, rather than women and their doctors, dictate whose medical needs are legitimate and whose aren't, a woman's health takes a back seat to a bureaucracy focused on policing her body, she said.

On his show earlier this week, Limbaugh said Fluke argued that she must be paid to have sex.

What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute... She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We're the pimps, Limbaugh said.

Fluke said Obama expressed concern for her and wanted to make sure that I was OK, which I am. I'm OK.

She added that her parents were hurt by Limbaugh's comments but thay are proud of her.

Press Secretary Jay Carney said the President called Fluke because he felt that the personal attacks in her direction was inappropriate.

It is disappointing that those kinds of personal and crude attacks could be leveled against someone like this young law school student who was simply expressing her opinion on a matter of public policy, and doing so with a great deal of poise, Carney told the Los Angeles Times.

Watch Fluke's interview below:

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