Lauren Boebert Once Got Very Personal About Conceiving Her Third Son

Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert is nothing if not candid about her opinions and experiences — even when it comes to something as personal as the conception of her child. While at a House Oversight Committee hearing centered around lofty prescription drug prices in May 2023, Boebert revealed that the reason her third son was conceived was because she couldn't afford her birth control. 

"My staff is probably going to talk to me about this later," Boebert prefaced her story. "But I left a prescription at a pharmacy once. I went to get birth control. I was there at the counter and went to pay for it. And the price was very, very high. I said, 'Wow, is this a three, six-month prescription?' 'No, ma'am, this is one month.' And I said, 'It's cheaper to have a kid,' and I left it there. And now I have my third son, Kaydon Boebert" (via The Hill).

The representative, who has previously worked to defund organizations that provide affordable contraception to the public, asserted that her inability to afford her birth control was ultimately a positive thing. However, her comments weren't widely well-received by her audience.

Four months before Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert would cite high contraception costs as the reason for having her third child, Kaydon Boebert, the politician introduced her first bill that sought to defund Planned Parenthood centers across the country. Per Planned Parenthood's website, these centers not only provide affordable contraception but also sexual health screenings, pregnancy testing and planning assistance, and mental health services, in addition to its highly divisive abortion services. 

Boebert's decision to defund Planned Parenthood rested on the last of these listed services. "The nation's largest abortion provider has no business receiving taxpayer dollars," Boebert said, explaining that she intended to divert hundreds of millions of funds to community health centers instead, per Colorado Newsline. The Affordable Care Act guarantees free to low-cost contraception for insured Colorado residents and any applicable dependents, according to the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies. 

However, this isn't always a viable option for menstruating individuals across the U.S. Those whose reproductive health care is dependent on Planned Parenthood facilities would face greater challenges if Boebert's fight to defund PP proved successful. New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed this out in a May 2023 tweet in which she shared a clip of Boebert's pregnancy story with the caption, "And then she voted against the right to contraception so she could double this problem and give it to the next person."

Lauren Boebert's story about her third pregnancy is hardly the first time her comments on conception have raised eyebrows across the country. While at a Conservative Political Action Conference in March 2023, the Colorado representative announced that her eldest son, a then-17-year-old Tyler Boebert, and his girlfriend were expecting their first child together, making Lauren a grandmother at 36.

Boebert herself was only 18 years old when she had her first of four sons with now ex-husband Jayson Boebert, whom she met when she was 16 and Jayson was 22. The future politician dropped out of high school to care for her child before later obtaining her GED. Despite the controversial way Lauren Boebert and her ex-husband started their family, the Colorado representative has praised teen pregnancies, particularly in rural communities.

"There's something special about rural conservative communities — 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, and teen mom rates are higher in rural, conservative areas because we understand the preciousness of the life that is about to be born," Boebert said at the 2023 CPAC conference. Of course, the politician's later comments leave one to wonder: are the pregnancies she's citing a result of the value of life or, like her third pregnancy, inaccessibility to affordable contraception?