President Obama said he called Sandra Fluke, the college student at the center of the latest Rush Limbaugh controversy, after thinking about how his own daughters would have handled the criticism.

“I thought about Malia and Sasha,” Obama said Tuesday at a news conference. “And one of the things I want them … to be able to do is speak their minds in a civil and thoughtful way, and I don’t want them attacked or called horrible names when they’re being good citizens.

“I wanted Sandra to know that her parents ought to be proud of her.”

Last week, Limbaugh called Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” on his radio show after the Georgetown University law student testified in support of Obama’s contraception mandate.