It is not often a member of the House of Representatives proudly boasts about the abortion she had, yet here we are. During a public rally against the passage of recent abortion bans in some states, California Rep. Jackie Speier stood before a crowd of protesters and shouted her abortion. The crowd cheered.

Watching clips of the #StoptheBans rally on television, I couldn’t help but think about how surreal the moment was as she went on to rail against the fetal heartbeat bills in front of the Supreme Court Tuesday. She spoke about being part of the statistic that claims one in four women have an abortion in America. It was jolting to watch pro-abortion protesters applaud and cheer her statements.

This wasn’t the first time the 69-year-old representative from California publicly shared her experience. Back in 2011, Speier became a folk hero during a debate on the House floor over cutting Title X funding. She inserted her abortion into that argument.

Protests were organized nationwide Tuesday and several 2020 Democrat candidates running for president joined in. The Alabama abortion ban signed into law last week brought about a renewed wave of protests from pro-abortion organizations and supporters. The Alabama bill is the most restrictive ever signed into law and it has caused division on both sides of the argument. It has no exemptions for survivors of rape and incest. President Trump, perhaps the most pro-life president in recent history, does not support the Alabama law.

Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Kirsten Gillibrand, Seth Moulton, and Tim Ryan, all candidates for the 2020 Democrat nomination, joined Rep. Speier and spoke during the rally in front of the Supreme Court. Some interesting remarks were made along the way. Congressman Tim Ryan, a man who is running as a moderate-leaning candidate from the midwest, voiced a common trope against pro-lifers. “When are these legislators going to give a shit about the baby once it’s born?” he said. This criticism, that pro-life people don’t care about babies once they are born, is often heard against conservatives. Yet, it is easily discredited once the work of charities, churches, and adoption providers, as well as pregnancy counselors, are brought into the equation. It is an effort to demonize pro-life people while humanizing the act of taking life from the unborn.

Amy Klobuchar also voiced a common misnomer in the pro-abortion narrative – she conflated abortion as health care for women. Most abortions are to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, not to aid the health of a woman. All of the abortion bills, by the way, include an exception for the life of the mother. That includes the Alabama bill.

Kirsten Gillibrand brought back the war on women in her remarks. “This is the beginning of President Trump’s war on women.” President Trump wants to treat women as “second class citizens” she said. Not mentioned was the war on the unborn babies and the fact that President Trump has more women in top positions as advisers and decision-makers than most presidents before him.

And then there was Senator Mazie Hirono. As I wrote about Tuesday, Senator Hirono loves the pursuit of a sound bite or a headline. She is known for expressing extreme opinions and her remarks at the #StoptheBans rally were no different than usual for her. She bragged about propagandizing abortion rights to eighth graders. That’s right. Eighth-grade students. They were public school students, so there are some Hawaiian tax dollars at work in her indoctrination of the young.

“I just left 60 eighth graders from a public school in Hawaii, and I told them I was coming to a rally in front of the Supreme Court, and they said, ‘Why?’,” Hirono said. “I said it’s because we are–we have to fight for abortion rights and they knew all about it.”

“And I asked the girls in that group of eighth graders: how many of you girls think that government should be telling us, women, when and if we want to have babies, not a single one of them raised their hands,” she continued.

“And then, the boys who were there among the sixty, I told them, you know, it’s kind of hard for a woman to get pregnant without you guys,” she said, and the crowd laughed. “They got it.”

“How many you boys think that government should be telling girls and women when and if we’re going to have babies, and not a single one of them raised their hand,” she added.

She also made a point of saying that some Justices on the Supreme Court are signaling they are willing to “undo” Roe v. Wade. No such thing has happened and all conservative nominees to the Supreme Court have described Roe v. Wade as settled precedent, including Justice Kavanaugh who she mentioned, but never mind the facts. There must always be a conservative boogeyman in the social justice warrior movement.

I joined activists across our country today to speak out against the nationwide attack on a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. When our rights are under attack, we must stand up and fight back. #StopTheBans pic.twitter.com/1gJ4XHnkpZ

— Senator Mazie Hirono (@maziehirono) May 21, 2019

As disturbing as Rep. Speier’s personal remarks were during the rally, Senator Hirono’s boasting of propagandizing young people is far worse. The next generation of voters shouldn’t be exploited in the pursuit of scoring political points, especially on such a divisive issue. The claims that none of the children raised their hands during her cynical questioning about “the government” is understandable, given the herd mentality by which middle-school students live. The last thing a middle school student wants to do is stand up for a differing point of view. Senator Hirono was speaking to them as an elected official. That kind of power is intimidating, especially to young people. She was promoting a false narrative and exploiting their innocence. She has no business randomly speaking to public school students about abortion. Leave the kids out of this discussion.