Life comes at you fast.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) has announced that her 17-year-old son Tyler and his girlfriend are expecting a child next month.
Boebert, 36, broke the happy news while speaking Tuesday at an event hosted by the conservative group Moms for America, where she touted the values of her rural countrymen.
“I’m going to tell you all for the first time in a public setting, that not only am I a mom of four boys, but come April, I will be a gigi to a brand new grandson,” said Boebert, who added that she and her husband Jayson “are so excited to welcome this new life into our family.”
The Republican congresswoman went on to praise “rural conservative communities,” saying they have a higher rate of teen moms who refuse abortions compared to their big city counterparts.
“There’s something special about rural conservative communities,” Boebert said.
“They value life.
“Teen moms’ rates are higher in rural conservative areas because they understand the preciousness of a life that it’s about to be born,” she added.
A 2019 study from the American Journal of Public Health suggested that teen birth rates are higher in rural areas because they are vulnerable to “local conditions that limit unintended pregnancy management options.”
Teens living in rural areas also face barriers to accessing abortion after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last year, triggering restrictions on the procedure across Republican-led states.
Boebert’s home state of Colorado is currently one of only six states where abortion is legal at all stages of pregnancy.
Boebert was a teen mom and dropped out of high school in her senior year when she was pregnant with Tyler.
She eventually got her GED before being elected to Congress in 2020.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that only about 50% of teen moms receive their high school diplomas by age 22 as opposed to 90% of women who don’t give birth as teenagers.
The congresswoman said she was not upset that she was going to be a grandmother at 36 and shared the conversation she had with her son after she learned the news.
“When I approached him and told him, ‘Tyler, I’m going to be a 36-year-old grandmother,’ he said, ‘Well didn’t you make granny a 36-year-old granny?”‘
“I said, ‘Yes, I did.’
He said, ‘Well then it’s hereditary,”‘ she recalled as the crowd laughed.
‘Nice try, buddy,’ she added.
Boebert’s announcement comes after she criticized American sex-ed classes last week during a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event, claiming the courses taught students about same-sex intercourse.
“There are schools that are teaching worse than just gender ideology,” Boebert said.
“I mean they have comprehensive sex-ed. They’re teaching kids how to have and enjoy sex, and even same-sex sex.”