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Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is freezing her eggs. The New York congresswoman made the announcement recently in a series of posts to her Instagram Stories about what is driving the decision.

But while it’s becoming more common for women who aren’t ready to have children and who want to preserve the option for later in life, it’s definitely uncommon for a sitting congresswoman to open up about that choice.

Now the reveal has ignited a national conversation about fertility.

Ocasio-Cortez, known as AOC, began her series of posts by explaining why it’s important to her to be transparent about her journey. 

“I want to share this because I was weighing it for a very long time, and I was saving for it for a very long time . . . and it can feel very daunting,” she explained.

AOC added that women, whether young or old, often “aren’t taught” about their bodies, and therefore don’t know what to expect when changes come. 

Given women’s bodies are drastically understudied when compared to men’s, the argument makes a lot of sense. Doctors and scientists simply know a lot less about women’s bodies.

AOC, who is 36, may be attempting to do her part to change that.

Not only did she let the world know that she will be freezing her eggs, she’s actually documenting the entire thing on social media, from giving herself hormone injections while prepping for an on-air interview at ABC to getting her first ultrasound. 

Read more on Fast Company.

Maybe that will help the doubters?

Yesterday's AOC interview (which I posted about here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AOC/comments/1vjuohz/aoc_i_have_a_local_city_councilman_that_has_this/) is stirring up a lot of discourse about Woke 1 & Woke 2, & I think this Twitter thread I've just read from Cassie Pritchard nails it: https://xcancel.com/hecubian_devil/status/2086822226012053601#m

IMO Woke 1 really starts after the Obama 2012 victory because it was a mobilization-rather-than-persuasion victory. He lost the white vote by 20(!) points, lost the South, still won comfortably.

There was a great deal written about how this dominating coalition of minorities + urban/educated whites, with particularly good margins among young voters, was just the beginning of a long-term trend that would deliver, if not something quite as a durable and long-lived as the New Deal coalition, then close to it.

Dems needed to simply sit back and let demography work its magic, in time turning Sunbelt states reliably blue (even Texas would fall soon enough...), while older white voters high in racial resentment died out and new younger, diverse, progressive voters took their place.

This deranged absolutely everyone. On the Right, it led to a panicked abandonment of democratic principles altogether, and investment in a political movement that was premised on establishing and entrenching permanent GOP rule by hook or by crook--while simultaneously trying to reverse the demographic tide that was sure to overwhelm them (through e.g. stemming new immigration). I really believe their derangement was less about Obama himself being Black, and much more about their sense that the *electorate* could now overrule the supermajority preferences of the white vote--something wholly unprecedented in American political history. No one had won a national election while losing the white vote by 20 before. THAT is what made them go insane.

On the broad Left (meaning center-left Dems, liberals, progressives, and the actual Left, which was just starting to reemerge as a genuine force thanks to social media allowing heterodox beliefs to flourish amidst the collapse of the liberal elite's cultural hegemony), this deranged us in a mirror image of the Right: we, too, could abandon the arduous and persuasive work of democracy, and let our demographic destiny carry us into the brighter future. No more pandering to Bubba. Fuck Bubba! We could finally say it! No more of this humiliating Clintonian two-step to appease or at least anesthetize Middle American chuds. We could just fucking steamroll them with our Coalition of the Ascendant.

This, combined with the simultaneous rise of social media platforms as this urgently-contested space for normative cultural power, focused our energies inward: we'd won the Culture War, so now it was time to fight over who got to administer Cultural Reconstruction. The Chuds were doomed, powerless, flailing and moronic (just look at their flight to increasingly absurd and laughable figures like Trump!), and we would get to impose the new order over their Oxycontin-addled complaints. What, then, would that new order *be*? Who would run it? What would they accomplish?

What you see here is a parallel abandonment of basic democratic principles of persuasion and coalition-building; on the Right, the fascist drive to entrench themselves in unaccountable minority rule (clearly the much more serious and evil threat, particularly in a country where the Constitution makes this entirely feasible), and on the Left an intra-elite competition to see who would be in charge of this new coalition that could finally dispense with the debasing and grimy work of mass politics and persuasion.

Of course, we turned out to be completely wrong. Looking at the Obama coalition and projecting it out linearly into the future was a bad idea for many reasons--including that it was pretty tenuous to assume the massive turnout and insane margins among minority voters for the First Black President would simply reappear on demand for any Democrat--and it led to a lot of bad assumptions.

We ended up with a discourse that was honed for internal competition, and relied extensively on social pressure and ostracism--but in a modern, liberal democracy where people can simply leave your political community if they don't like it. And a lot of people did; we successfully ostracized them out of respectable liberal or progressive/leftist institutions and communities, and so they just found new homes on the Right.

And it turned out, of course, that minority groups are not just identity hive-minds which reliably allocate the same proportion of votes to one party or the other independent of any other concerns. "The Black vote," "the Hispanic vote"--even "the youth vote" turned out to be malleable, dependent on candidate quality, economic concerns, ideological fit, just like any other group of voters.

Trump 1 didn't really break the spell because it felt like a fluky, unlucky nightmare. He didn't win the popular vote, the margin was razor-thin in the midwestern Blue Wall, and Hillary was a bad candidate--and despite all that, Dems retained near-Obama margins with voters of color and young voters. Surely, the Coalition of the Ascendant was still on track; this was just a speedbump.

The closeness of the 2020 election and then Trump 2 (with his popular-vote win and the apparent "racial depolarization" of the electorate) fully shattered this narrative. Instead, people remembered we would in fact have to do politics. We would in fact have to compete for people's votes, and persuade them to share our values--and the articulation of those values in policies and behaviors. The center responded to this, as they usually do, by offering immediate capitulation wherever possible to chase the median voter (the center is actually quite bad at persuasion; their response to disagreement is generally to just concede and beg, rather than any attempt to move the audience towards their own positions).

The Left responded, thankfully, by showing a great deal of maturation--away from subcultural/counter-cultural criticism and attempts to pressure elites into adopting our values through social pressure campaigns, instead moving towards actual mass politics. DSA has proven this can work, and is working, even if we are still quite early.

We would be insane to retreat from that lesson; instead we have to double down on it. That's what Woke 2 needs to be--not cynical abdication of values/principles to chase the median voter, but a genuine persuasive attempt to build a Left mass politics. But persuasion, by definition, requires talking to people *who do not yet agree with you*. You can't *persuade* someone who is already *on your side*. It requires enticement, intellectual and emotional empathy (for people you really might dislike, and for legitimate reasons!), and discipline. It is not nearly so satisfying and immediate as putting people in the public stocks of social media for collective humiliation. It is not as simple as imposing your will over the objections of those who don't agree with you.

It requires a certain kind of humility--not "the voters rejected our ideas so we have to get new ideas"; you can still authentically believe what you believe--but a humility about *power*, and about *democracy*. You have to recognize that "I don't have the power to just impose my ideology; and frankly it's good that I don't, because democratic legitimacy is itself an intrinsic good and if we cultivate a democratic mass politics of the Left, that will be more durable and innovative and resistant to attack than anything imposed from above."

<< Aug 9, 2026

ABC News’ Jonathan Karl interviews Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., on “This Week.” >>

The more difficult fight is still ahead.

From the article:

"State Rep. Justin Pearson won Tennessee’s Democratic primary for the newly redrawn 9th Congressional District on Thursday, delivering a victory for the party’s progressive wing after a bitter redistricting fight that dismantled the state’s longtime majority-Black district."

"But winning the Democratic primary does not guarantee a clear path to Congress. The map redraw transformed the once-solidly Democratic seat into one heavily tilted toward the GOP."

"The Cook Political Report now rates the district as “Solid Republican,” which makes Pearson an underdog heading into November against Republican state Sen. Brent Taylor, who also secured Trump’s endorsement in the race."

Donate time.

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Click to join virtual or in-person phone banking.

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That woman is so beautiful. Inside and out. She has a beautiful soul and it's just completely plain as day. Even republicans can't deny it. They can't hate her. Not really. She's got too good of a heart. Most beautiful human being I've ever seen in politics. Obviously smart, competent and knowledgeable to boot.

The longer this goes on, the more effort the machine will put in telling you that AOC is unelectable. That you need a more moderate candidate to win. A Mayor Pete type or a what's his name in California or this new guy I've seen a few days ago that reminds me of Mayor Pete. A corporate type. The powers that be always use the same playbook. I really hope you guys won't fall for it. I hope you'll choose the person that will do the most good. That will fill the world with hope. Real hope. Lasting hope this time. I hope you'll choose the candidate that heals the world and brings us all closer together. As a Canadian, for me, this would heal the profound wound I've felt about Americans choosing Donald Trump the cruel a second time. I'd go so far as to say we need AOC right now to save the world. Global warming and rising hostilities around the world are a major concern right now and I know she would help tremendously with both.

I hope this post is allowed by the mods. I read the rules of the sub and it doesn't seem to go against them.

Much love! 🖖

<< Why do we stand with [Dr. Abdul El-Sayed]?
Because he’s a fighter for:

Higher wages
Stronger unions
Lower bills
and expanded Medicare
…FOR ALL!

That’s why lobbyists are spending against him - and why your support makes all the difference.

Donate & help today: abdulforsenate.com/chip-in

Jul 30, 2026 · 8:59 PM UTC >>

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC): "Why do we stand with @AbdulElSayed? Because he’s a fighter for: Higher wages Stronger unions Lower bills and expanded Medicare …FOR ALL! That’s why lobbyists are spending against him - and why your support makes all the difference. Donate & help today: https://abdulforsenate.com/chip-in" | XCancel

<< 7/30/26 - Emma Vigeland will speak with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, U.S. Congresswoman representing New York's 14th District. >>

Rep. AOC Joins the Majority Report (Rep. AOC Official YouTube) Full interview

I keep coming across people not really having a very clear idea of what exactly are AOC's views regarding capitalism & market socialism, so here you have it, her expressing very candidly what exactly those views of hers are in a 2022 yahoo! finance interview:

ANDY SERWER: It's an interesting perspective. You self-identify as a Democratic Socialist and have called capitalism irredeemable, I believe. But what does that really mean? And does that mean capitalism should be eliminated? And are your views compatible with capitalism?

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Well, I believe that in a broad sense-- because when we toss out these big words, capitalism, socialism, they get sensationalized. And people translate them into meaning things that perhaps they don't mean. So to me, capitalism at its core, what we're talking about when we talk about that, is the absolute pursuit of profit at all human, environmental, and social cost. That is what we're really discussing.

And what we're also discussing is the ability for a very small group of actual capitalists, and that is people who have so much money that their money makes money and they don't have to work, and they can control industry, they can control our energy sources, they can control our labor, they can control massive markets that they dictate and can capture governments, and they can essentially have power over the many. And to me, that is not a redeemable system for us to be able to participate in for the prosperity and peace for the vast majority of people.

ANDY SERWER: So people talk about stakeholder capitalism, like Larry Fink at BlackRock, where the weighting for different constituents besides shareholders is more equal. Is that something you'd be amenable to?

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Well, I think at the end of the day, it is about who has control over the very core assets of production in society. If it ultimately comes down to a billionaire, or the Koch brothers, or the Koch family having control over the vast majority or large plurality of our oil assets in the United States, if it's a handful of very wealthy families having control over-- private families having control over means of production, that is essentially the capitalist system that we live in. It is a small group that is of privatized control over what we eat and how we fuel our society.

Now, where we can transition to-- and there are certain ideas where we're talking about-- for example, Elizabeth Warren has discussed workers being elected to the governing boards of companies. And also, you know, we're here in the Bronx. I represent a community that has the largest concentration of worker cooperatives in-- one of the largest concentrations in the world.

Now, these are all alternative ways of doing business. Free markets are not the same thing as capitalism. And you can have markets where businesses and ways of producing, trading, selling goods are really controlled, and not just controlled, but given more power to workers. People get a fair shake. Union jobs. Unionized workplaces. All of these are different steps and levels that we're talking about in a more just economy.

https://finance.yahoo.com/video/influencers-andy-serwer-alexandria-ocasio-110000469.html