AOC, her eggs, and the hypocrisy surrounding women

A medical decision became a moral judgment. But the real scandal isn’t what the Puerto Rican congresswoman did; it’s that not all women can do it.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortés (Facebook)

Published on Substack

There is something profoundly hypocritical about the way this society talks about women and motherhood.

When a woman decides to have children, she is asked if she can balance motherhood with her career. When she decides to wait a few years to focus on her professional growth, she is told that time is running out. That she’s getting old, and when she finally wants them, it will be hard.

When she decides not to have children, she is called selfish. And when she decides to freeze her eggs to preserve a future option, the judges, the moralists, and the self-righteous commentators show up anyway. That is precisely what just happened to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The 36-year-old U.S. congresswoman of Puerto Rican descent decided to freeze her eggs and had the guts—not to say the courage—to speak publicly about the process. She said she had been considering it for a long time and made the decision to feel greater control over her life. And then, the pack descended.

The usual criticism poured in from conservative sectors and the MAGA movement: that she is defying nature, promoting the false idea that women can indefinitely postpone motherhood, and putting her career before family.

How curious. When a man spends decades building a political, business, or professional career before thinking about having children, no one is scandalized. He is called a visionary. An ambitious woman, on the other hand, is demanded to account for her womb. She is asked: "And what about children?" There lies the trap.

We live in a society that still expects women to be mothers, yet simultaneously organizes the economy, labor, and politics as if motherhood were a private inconvenience every woman must solve on her own. And then we wonder why so many women delay motherhood.

AOC is doing something far more important than freezing eggs. She is bringing an uncomfortable conversation to the table: why should a woman have to choose between her life’s ambition and the possibility of becoming a mother? Because that is the real question.

Freezing eggs do not guarantee a future pregnancy. It is not a reproductive insurance policy. Specialists warn that age remains an important factor and that the chances of success are not absolute. But they also agree that at 36, it remains a reasonable option to preserve reproductive possibilities.

What is truly scandalous shouldn’t be that AOC made this decision. The real scandal is that not all women are able to make it.

AOC herself had to save for a long time to pay for the procedure. And there lies another layer of this hypocrisy: we preach about reproductive freedom, but that freedom is often only available to those who can afford it.

A wealthy woman can freeze her eggs. A poor woman might not even be able to afford a fertility consultation. A female professional can attempt to buy time. A working-class woman living paycheck to paycheck can barely afford the present. So, what reproductive freedom are we really talking about?

And here is my biggest issue with those attacking AOC: they seem far more invested in acting like moral judges with the right to dictate when a woman should have children than asking themselves why society fails to make it possible for her to have them whenever she chooses.

Where is dignified parental leave? Where are the accessible childcare services? Where is financial security? Where are the living wages that allow families to raise children? Where is accessible reproductive healthcare? Where is men’s responsibility?

Because it is very comfortable to tell a woman to have children while building a system that forces her to pay practically the entire professional, financial, and physical cost of having them.

And there is an even greater irony. The very sectors that attack a woman for making decisions about her eggs are often the same ones advocating for the State to hold more power over women’s reproductive choices. They want to control pregnancy. They want to control abortion. They want to decide which treatments are acceptable. And now, they also want a say in when a woman should freeze her eggs. Doesn’t that feel like too much control over a single life?

AOC is not forcing any woman to freeze her eggs. She isn't saying everyone should do it. She is simply saying: this is a decision I made about my body and my future. And that should be enough.

We can discuss the costs, the science behind it, the real success rates, and the limits of technology. We can talk about the pressure placed on female professionals to postpone motherhood. We can even question a work culture that makes a woman feel she needs to freeze her eggs, just to keep moving forward in her career. But turning her personal decision into a moral trial is another story entirely.

Because in the end, it’s not about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s eggs. It’s about the fact that we still live in a world that demands women to have children, yet insists on dictating when, how, and under what conditions they must have them.

And perhaps that is why AOC’s decision sparked such a reaction. Because a woman who takes charge of her own time, her own body, and her own future remains, to far too many people, a dangerous woman. Even if all she is doing is holding onto a possibility. A possibility that belongs to her.

Nydia Velázquez, Arturo Massol Deyá and AOC

Last year, I had the opportunity to speak at length with AOC. It was at a Casa Pueblo event hosted by Arturo Massol Deyá on the grounds outside the Choliseo, right in the middle of Bad Bunny’s historic residency. I loved our conversation.

Speaking with her, I realized she is a determined woman who is clear about what she wants in life. I’ve been interviewing politicians for over 30 years, and they don’t always give off that impression. That’s why her decision regarding motherhood didn’t surprise me. It takes courage to own it. That decision is deeply personal, and it must be respected.

Me and AOC

Alexandria is a woman who knows the weight of misogyny and racism firsthand, as demonstrated when she survived both past trauma and the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, when MAGA mobs invaded and people were killed. AOC was hunted. She hid from a potential attack, influenced in part by her experience as a survivor of sexual assault. Ocasio-Cortez later told CNN that past trauma weighed heavily on her mind while hiding from the racist mobs.

“White supremacy and patriarchy are very linked in a lot of ways,” Ocasio-Cortez said at the time. “There’s a lot of sexualization of that violence.”

That is why I think AOC is brave—because she knows the criticism she will always face for being a young, smart, Latina woman. In the hypocritical society we live in, those qualities are still unforgivable in a woman.

That’s why I believe that at this point in her life, she knows exactly what steps she is taking. Her mission right now is to continue serving the people as a congresswoman, and when the time comes, she will decide whether or not to become a mother. To her, I simply say: Alexandria, cógelo con calma. Take your time. No te dejes—don't let them push you around.