Lauren Boebert, a Republican congresswoman from Colorado, announced that her 17-year-old son Tyler is expecting a baby with his girlfriend. The 36-year-old ardent opponent of abortion revealed the news at an event by the conservative group Moms for America.
“I want to publicly share with you for the first time that not only am I a mother of four boys, but in April I will also be a grandmother to my first grandchild,” said Boebert, who added that she and her husband Jayson “so very excited to welcome this new life into our family”.
The congresswoman claimed that she does not mind being a grandmother at 36. “When I told him, Tyler, I’m going to be a 36-year-old grandmother, he told me, because even my grandmother became a grandmother at 36 because of you. I couldn’t deny it, and he: Well, so it’s hereditary,” she said to the laughter of the crowd.
Boebert added that one of her biggest fears was not “what people will say,” but whether her son and his girlfriend would “choose life.” “And they did. And we’re so very proud of them,” she delivered.
She sang the values of rural communities
The congresswoman then went on to sing the praises of “rural conservative communities,” saying they have a higher proportion of teenage mothers who refuse abortions compared to their counterparts in larger cities. “There is something special about rural conservative communities. They value life. The proportions of teenage mothers are higher in these areas because they understand the preciousness of life,” she said.
A 2019 study by the American Journal of Public Health states that rates of teenage mothers are higher in rural areas because these areas lack “options to limit unwanted pregnancies.”
Rural teenage girls are finding it even more difficult to access abortion after the Supreme Court’s ruling last year overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade, which allowed Republican states to introduce much stricter legislation in this area.
Colorado, where Boebert is from, is currently one of only six states where abortion is allowed at all stages of pregnancy.
Horrified by sex education
Boebert herself became a first-time mother as a teenager and dropped out of high school in her senior year when she became pregnant. She finally graduated a few years later before being elected to Congress in 2020. During her election campaign, she made no secret of her opposition to abortion, saying that she believed life begins at conception and that she would “always defend life”.
The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) notes that only about 50 percent of teenage mothers graduate by age 22, compared to 90 percent of other women. Boebert’s revelation that she will be a grandmother comes after she criticized American schools with sex education in their curriculum at a conservative conference last week, saying they teach students about same-sex sexual relations.
“There are schools that teach worse things than just gender ideology. They have comprehensive sex education. They teach children how to have sex and how to enjoy sex – and even about same-sex sex!” she was horrified.
Boebert is also known as one of the most ardent defenders of gun rights and has strongly opposed a recently passed law in Colorado that allows courts to temporarily confiscate guns from a person deemed a danger to the public. Her affinity for firearms is so great that when she was elected, she said she intended to carry her gun in Congress, after which she posted a video of herself walking armed on Capitol Hill.
Source: Rtvslo
