AOC Reveals She Is Freezing Her Eggs: “Don’t Be Weird About This”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she has begun the process of freezing her eggs, sharing the decision in a series of Instagram stories in which she filmed the unboxing of her fertility medications and administered a hormone injection on camera.

Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat who is 36, said she had considered the decision for a long time and saved money for it before moving forward. She said she chose to make it public because she believes there is little candid information available to women weighing the same choice.

“Don’t be weird about this even though I know all of you will be,” she said before giving herself an injection. “Okay, that wasn’t so bad.”

Ocasio-Cortez said she recorded the videos during the August congressional recess, when lawmakers are typically away from Washington.

“It’s August recess, and I think it’s good for you all to hear a little bit more from me directly,” she said. “I also am having some things happen in my life that I want to share more with you. You know I’ve been kind of in a little bit of a reflective mood, and I got elected. I first got elected when I was 28. I won my primary when I was 28. I got sworn into the House of Representatives when I was 29 years old as the youngest woman in American history to get elected to Congress.”

She said serving in office at a young age has meant living through experiences in public that most people navigate privately.

“When you get elected as a young person, and since then and also before then there have been tons of young people that have been getting elected amazingly, and then also as the elected official there’s also this flip side where you have to then grow up in the public eye in a time that most people usually get to grow more privately,” she said. “When you get elected later in life, you’ve made all of your mistakes in private, you’ve learned, you’ve grown in private, but when you get elected in public, and when you’re young, you have to do all of that in public.”

Ocasio-Cortez contrasted the format of her social media posts with press coverage of her political future. She has been the subject of persistent speculation about a possible statewide or national run.

“I want to talk to you all in a way that I often can’t talk to the media, because the media will run up and ask a question like are you going to run for this or are you going to run for that, and it is almost through this very two-dimensional, craven understanding or ambitious understanding of power, when I think a lot of us actually approach these considerations or these decisions through the larger context of our lives as whole human beings and what is happening in our lives as whole human beings,” she said.

She said she has tried to speak about her career in plain terms, “as just a person, what it’s like to go from being a waitress to serving in Congress, to being a working person, to being a young person in office, so that you can do it too. More human perspective, like as a person and not just a thing in a suit that’s like flattened to talk about things in a way that focus groups say poll well.”

Turning to the announcement itself, Ocasio-Cortez said: “All of that whole ramble rather is because I want to share with you all a decision that is very personal that I have made, that has taken me time to consider, weigh and save up for, and it is of a sensitive matter and a personal matter. Usually I keep my private life quite private, but I have made the decision to start freezing my eggs, and I want to share that with anyone who is, as I was, weighing it for a very long time.”

She said she saved for the procedure over an extended period and found few resources to guide her.

“There just isn’t a ton out there, I feel, and sometimes it can feel very daunting,” she said. “As women in general we are not taught about our bodies, we are not prepared for our own lives, whether that is in puberty, whether that is in pregnancy, whether that is in perimenopause, menopause, whether that is in so many different aspects of our lives, whether that is if you have a condition like PCOS, whether you know you want to plan to have a family, whether you don’t plan to have children or biologically or what have you. I think we need to show more depictions of women having full lives in every context and every choice.”

Ocasio-Cortez said she was aware that disclosing the decision could carry professional consequences.

“In just filming this, I am also aware that there is very strangely a political quote-unquote risk or even a political tax that could come with sharing this information, and per usual that doesn’t influence my ultimate decision,” she said. “But it is so interesting because I’m also aware that in all of this kind of swirling conversation that happens, I am now kind of opening the door to this being part of that discussion, and whether that’s legitimate or not, you know, that’s a whole conversation unto itself.”

She said the scrutiny is not applied evenly to men in politics.

“This is just not something that men deal with,” she said. “You know, men run for office, or frankly they interview for jobs, and people don’t think in the back of their mind, okay, this guy’s running for office, how old is he, oh well, is he gonna want to start a family, or is he even, or if he does or if he doesn’t, has he made a choice of, you know, people don’t go down those rabbit holes and fixate on them for men in terms of their decision the way that they do for women. And I’m not here to like talk about what’s fair or unfair in this context. This is just the world that we live in today.”

She added: “So I’m aware that just by me choosing to not keep this private there may be a consequence, but you know what, I’m okay with that. This is a choice that I am making to feel more in control of my life, and if people want to make assumptions about my decision, let them make those assumptions. I feel empowered to make this choice. I think it’s a very privileged position that I’ve been able to be able to make, and it’s also a result of, I think, changes in technology that have also made it more financially accessible.”

Ocasio-Cortez said she planned to document the treatment cycle, including injections she said she would give herself in a television green room before an appearance on ABC’s Sunday morning program.

“So here we are, and I’m gonna kind of take you along with it,” she said. “I filmed my unboxing of my medications. I filmed my, I just took my first shot this morning, and I’ll have to take another shot tomorrow, shots tomorrow. As part of my job, I am back in D.C. today because I’m going to be on ABC this week, Sunday morning show. I’m going to be delivering an interview on national television, and it’s in the morning, and I have to take my shots because of the timing of it. I’m going to take my shots in the green room before my interview, and I want you all to see that, and because women can do anything.”

“I think it’s badass that I’m going to be, you know, giving myself shots in the green room, get my glam on, roll out, talk about international events, domestic policy, elections, pop out, live my life, do my thing, and I think it’s great,” she said.

She said she hoped the posts would encourage other women to speak openly about their bodies and their choices.

“I love seeing older women online. I love when they talk about menopause and perimenopause, and I love when they talk about nothing at all, and I love when people talk about puberty and pregnancy and PCOS and all of it, because if we want community we have to raise our hand and be community for each other, and so that’s what we’re going to do,” she said.

Ocasio-Cortez, a frequent critic of the Trump administration, tied the disclosure to the broader political fight over reproductive health care.

“Also in the political context that we’re in, in an administration that is dedicated to politicizing women’s bodies and taking our choices away from us and punishing us around decisions to be pregnant or not be pregnant, and frankly this administration has made pregnancy more dangerous than probably at any point in the last 30 plus years, we’re going to take our power back,” she said.