Ditto (as it were). I don’t see the relevance of the McGovern story to the Boebert story, or frankly, to modern times (which have changed a lot in the last FIFTY years).
Studies have shown that proper sex education at a young age is the best way to prevent teenage pregnancies. Keeping basic facts of life from sexually mature teenagers and just preaching ‘abstinence abstinence abstinence’ at them has shown time and time again not to work. So yeah, I have no problem holding her accountable for her atrocious views and actions in this case.
Even given her stances against sex ed?
Come on guys, really? McGovern was a Democrat, so this just proves that “All Democrats Are the Worst Ever, Leave Granny Boebert Alone!”
Yeah. I’d like to be The Better ManTM here, but I can’t.
The hypocrisy with these folks knows no bounds and creates real harm. I believe there’s a needle to thread by calling out the hypocrisy while trying to protect the juveniles involved from direct attacks.
This, writ large, is just too big an issue to let the Boeberts of the world constantly demagogue when their private lives tell such a diametrically different tale.
Plus, it was a pretty damn depressing story.
The thing is - is this example really a case of hypocrisy? She seems quite happy with the situation, and isn’t lamenting, “Oh, why did my son not know how to use a condom?!?” I suspect she’d be quite happy with there being a whole lot of teen parents out there due to her campaign against sex ed. “Barefoot and pregnant”, after all. Someone who’s a parent at 16 is far less likely to be attending some liberal brainwashing university.
She already is. Boebert is 36 years old (as the title of this thread notes), and the minimum age to be elected president in the U.S. is 35.
And leaving the real work of the country, like politicking, to the men.
That was already pointed out to me and I acknowledged around post 10. For some reason, I had age 40 in my head for President. When your last two presidents are well past the age of retirement, 40 seems so dang young! My bad.
Warning for hijacking the thread with a post with no actual relation to the thread. In fact I am also thread banning you from this one as it was just an out of place post.
Please report odd hijacks like this rather than engaging. Thank you.
At home behind closed doors, I’m sure that’s exactly what went on.
That may be true, but when you take a look at everything we know about her life and her family, I think she might actually believe that the “Idiocracy” lifestyle of letting lots of stupid kids have lots of stupid kids really is a good thing.
I think you make a very good point, @Horatius
Maybe I’ll revise my statement and just say that – once again – the party of freedom and individual liberty dictates to others what they should and shouldn’t be doing in incredibly personal matters.
Maybe the Boeberts view this teen pregnancy as a “gift from God” or maybe it was a drunken accident within a family that seems (in)famous for such behaviors, and an epic tirade against the kids ensued. I truly have no idea.
But even if it is what they deem best for their family, I still get sick of them dictating to others what (is probably NOT) best for theirs.
This culture war stuff should be against everything that old-school Conservatives stood for, but – as it happens – I know what the “Southern Strategy” was, and how the Republicans made a deal with the devil to get the conservative southerners on their side.
And the price they/we all pay to keep them there.
It’s still as fine an example of cognitive dissonance as most of us will ever see in our lifetimes 
I’m not sure why it’s being taken as a Bad Thing to have children in one’s late teens. I wouldn’t have been mature enough at 17, but some are, or become so with family support.
My grandparents’ generation married as teens as a matter of course. A lot of this was due to poverty (no options for higher ed. etc.) and no viable options for sex outside marriage. Even so, it’s a pretty normal human condition.
I would prefer that people finish high school before breeding, but I think it’s really narrow-minded and not a little classist to presume that a late teen pregnancy is inherently undesirable.
(My cousin was a grandmother in her 30s… she hasn’t had a life I’d have chosen, but it’s a very ordinary working-class life, with zero regrets expressed re: teen pregnancies.)
My aunt was a grandmother at 36. It’s rare these days, but it sure happens.
I became a grandfather at 41, but it was my step daughter that I later adopted. But my son is only 2 days younger than her and she was a legal adult at the time. I became a great grandfather at 65. My sister has me beat, she became a great grandmother at 58, that’s her fault for becoming pregnant at 15.
The girl in question is 16. The boy is 17 about to turn 18.
That’s not late teens. They’re both in high school, or should be. This is exactly the type of teen pregnancy that both sides condemn and that studies show is harmful.
A 2019 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that teen pregnancies in rural areas tend to be unintended and may be higher because teens may be vulnerable to “local conditions that limit unintended pregnancy management options.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that only about 50% of teen mothers receive a high school diploma by 22, compared to 90% of women who do not give birth during high school. “The children of teenage mothers are more likely to have lower school achievement and to drop out of high school, have more health problems, be incarcerated at some time during adolescence, give birth as a teenager, and face unemployment as a young adult,” according to the CDC.
The CDC recommends providing teens with sexual education and other resources to prevent teen pregnancies.
But not Boebert
Boebert at CPAC called to cut funding to schools that provide comprehensive sex education because there are schools “that are teaching worse than just gender ideology.”
“They have comprehensive sex ed. They’re teaching kids how to have and enjoy sex, and even same-sex sex, how to pleasure themselves,” she said. “This is not something elementary students should learn, nor any student in a public school…These are the things that we need to go after and cut their funding.”
If windmills could be turned by Republican hypocrisy we’d never have to worry about renewable energy ever again.
13 | early
14 | early
15 | early-to-mid
16 | mid
17 | mid-to-late
18 | late
19 | late
Hmm… I suppose I’d have to agree with you re: 16. I wish I knew more about child development: I just don’t have it in me to say that an 18- or 19-year-old shouldn’t have kids, though I’d almost certainly advise against it if anyone asked. I don’t know at what age (either physically or developmentally) it crosses the line into a Bad Idea. I do know that most of our judgements on “harm” revolve around an individual’s economic potential rather than a holistic assessment of their life including education, family, overall happiness, etc.
Part of this has to do with high school. There’s an idea that parenthood and high school can’t mix, but I’m not certain that’s true. I suspect that there’s a lot of shaming of pregnant students, which is unconscionable, but I see no reason why a woman couldn’t go to school and raise a kid, if (and only if) there were adequate childcare support for her and a supportive environment in the school. I suspect it’s the lack of those two things rather than being in high school per se.
Anyway. Where I do agree is that at any age, having children should be an informed choice, not the result of sexual choices made in ignorance, and abstinence education (and sex shaming) do contribute to that, so I’ll happily join the pile-on of Boebert regarding that aspect.
35 is the minimum age to become President. A person could be elected President at 34 as long as he or she turned 35 before the inauguration.
That means that Mick Jagger’s son is a grandfather. Oy vey!
As for the discussion about Boebert, sorry, I got nothin’. She’s an idiot, has no clue what she’s talking about, and if there were justice in the world, she would just shut up.