Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) shared an ironic personal story on Tuesday about why she quit birth control—one that fellow Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) couldn’t help but mock, given Boebert’s past stances against reproductive freedom.
“I left a prescription at a pharmacy once,” Boebert said at a House Oversight hearing on drug prices. “I went to get birth control, and I was there at the counter and went to pay for it, and the price was very, very high … I said, ‘It’s cheaper to have a kid.’ And I left it there, and now I have my third son, Kaydon Boebert, and so it turned out to be a really great thing.”
Ocasio-Cortez shot back on Twitter.
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“And then she voted against the right to contraception so she could double this problem and give it to the next person,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response to a clip of Boebert’s anecdote.
She’s right—Boebert voted against the Right to Contraception Act in July of 2022, an act that likely would have made the birth control from Boebert’s story more accessible.
Boebert famously has said she dropped out of high school because of her own teenage pregnancy. Her 17-year-old son is now following in her footsteps, expecting a child of his own that will make Boebert a grandmother at just 36 years old.
The congresswoman has also encouraged other teen moms to do the same. In March, at an event hosted by Moms for America, Boebert said that rural conservatives are “special” because they don’t get abortions like the city folks do.
“There's something special about rural conservative communities,” Boebert said. “They value life. If you look at teen pregnancy rates throughout the nation, well, they're the same, [in] rural and urban areas. However, abortion rates are higher in urban areas. Teen moms’ rates are higher in rural conservative areas, because they understand the preciousness of a life that it's about to be born.”
