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.
