Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., announced this weekend that she’s undergoing fertility treatment, and has decided to document her journey as Democrats highlight President Donald Trump’s failures on the issue.
“I want to share with you all a decision that is very personal that I’ve made, that has taken me time to consider, weigh and save up for,” Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, said in a video posted on her Instagram story Saturday night. “And it is of a sensitive matter and a personal matter, and usually I keep my private life quite private. But I have made the decision to start freezing my eggs.”
In her message made at the start of the congressional August recess, the 36-year-old progressive star and potential 2028 presidential contender said freezing her eggs was a decision she has been thinking about for a long time. Ocasio-Cortez — who said again on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that she hasn’t ruled out running for president or for the Senate in two years — acknowledged the political risk and scrutiny that may come with publicly sharing the news.
“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,” she said.
Ocasio-Cortez posted a video of herself taking her first injection while seated on her couch with her dog. She encouraged the public to ask questions about the process since “as women in general, we are not taught about her 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.”
She said she had to take subsequent shots backstage ahead of her ABC interview on Sunday.
“In this political environment where this administration is denying reproductive care to women across the country, from abortion rights to the ability to carry out a healthy pregnancy, I think it’s important for us, as leaders, to have these conversations and share these processes,” she said in the interview.
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