“This administration has made pregnancy more dangerous than probably at any point in the last 30 plus years — we’re gonna take our power back.”
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez revealed on Saturday that she has decided to freeze her eggs, sharing the decision publicly in a post on Instagram and accusing the Trump administration of “punishing” women on the issue of pregnancy.
“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 — and I want to share this because I was weighing it for a very long time, and I think that, you know, I was saving for it for a very long time, and there just isn’t a ton out there, I feel, and sometimes it can feel very daunting,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a video posted on her Instgram story.
“And 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,” she added.
Ocasio-Cortez also shared a video of herself administering medication by injecting it into her stomach as part of the process. After administering the injection, she said it “wasn’t so bad.”
The congresswoman framed her decision within the debate over abortion, criticizing the current administration and saying women are currently in a “dangerous” position.
“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 gonna take our power back,” she said.
“I got sworn into the House of Representatives when I was 29 years old. I was the youngest woman in American history to get elected to Congress,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “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, and when you get elected later in life you've made all of your mistakes in private.”
She also argued that women in politics face questions about their age and plans to have children in ways men do not.
“This is just not something that men deal with. Men run for office, or frankly, they interview for jobs and people don't think in the back of their mind, ‘OK this guy's running for office, how old is he? Oh, well is he gonna wanna start a family?’” she said. “This is a choice I am making to feel more in control of my life.”
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