Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) made a public video announcement over the weekend about a private matter: The congresswoman is freezing her eggs.
Ocasio-Cortez, 36, posted a series of videos on social media in which she said this is a decision she made to “feel more in control of my life.” She said she had been weighing the decision and saving up for the pricey fertility procedure, which often isn’t covered by insurance, for a long time.
The congresswoman said she was going public with her decision against the backdrop of steps by the Trump administration to curtail abortion access and some forms of reproductive care across the country. It also comes amid speculation that she could seek higher office. She said that she was making the egg-freezing decision in a “privileged position” and said that, unlike men, women applying for jobs or running for office face intense scrutiny about when, or if, they will have children.
“I think it’s important for us as leaders to have these conversations and share these processes, especially for working women across the country, and normalize them,” Ocasio-Cortez said on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” on Sunday morning.
Egg freezing is an increasingly popular procedure in which a woman’s eggs are extracted from her body, frozen and then stored. Those eggs can later be fertilized, growing until the embryos are ready to be transferred into the uterus with the hopes of the woman becoming pregnant, according to UCLA Health.
Women opt to have the procedure for many reasons, including to preserve their eggs and reproductive ability if they are undergoing chemotherapy or other medical treatments that could affect their fertility.
But many healthy women also choose to use the process to preserve their reproductive ability if they are not ready to have children during their biologically prime reproductive years.
A 2025 UCLA study found that between 2014 and 2021, there was a sharp increase in the number of planned elective egg-freezing cycles. In that period, women began freezing their eggs at younger ages, with the average age dropping from 36 years in 2014 to 34.9 in 2021.
The study also landed on the surprising finding that only a small number of women — 5.7 percent who froze their eggs between 2014 and 2016 — returned to use their eggs in the next five to seven years.
In her videos, Ocasio-Cortez showed viewers the array of medications she is required to self-administer for the process.
The medication process typically lasts 10 to 12 days, with women injecting themselves with two or three hormone medications every day, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. During that time, women will have frequent bloodwork and four to six pelvic ultrasounds.
Once the eggs have matured, a medical professional will retrieve them in a 20-to-30-minute ultrasound-guided surgical procedure during which the patient is under anesthesia.
Ocasio-Cortez filmed herself injecting hormones into her abdomen, jokingly telling her viewers: “Don’t be weird about this. Even though I know all of you will be.”
When it was done, she said it “wasn’t so bad.”
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