(WASHINGTON, March 23, 2009) Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Florida representative who stood with PROTECT through countless tough battles in the 110th Congress, revealed today that she was quietly fighting a successful battle against cancer the entire time.

"In the past year, she underwent seven major surgeries," the Miami Herald reports today, "including a double masectomy and reconstructive surgery, while balancing motherhood, Congress and her roles as a chief fundraiser for House Democrats and a political surrogate, first for Hillary Clinton and then for Barack Obama."

"Debbie was already our hero," said PROTECT National Campaign Chairman David Keith today. "But to learn of this parallel war she has been waging leaves us all reevaluating what we are made of."

Rep. Wasserman Schultz says she kept her battle with cancer quiet to protect her children from public speculation that might worry them. Never one just to talk when a good punch can be thrown, Wasserman Schultz announced her news along with a bill to for a national education campaign aimed at young women.

"Young women go skipping along through their life, thinking they're invincible, not worrying about breast cancer because they think of it as an older woman's disease," says the Congresswoman.

"If she fights breast cancer like she fights the cancer of child abuse, she'll kick the living daylights out of it," says PROTECT executive director Grier Weeks.

"I can see a cure on the horizon already."