Caitlin Flanagan: Must Egg Freezing Be ‘Normalized’ by AOC?

Last Saturday night, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted a video to her Instagram Stories saying she had decided to start freezing her eggs. The next day, she went on a Sunday show and took a fertility shot in the green room; on Monday, TMZ reported that she and her fiancé had split up—a report she did not deny when the New York Post asked her about it Wednesday. It was like watching the life cycle in reverse.

Where was the “zero emission” engagement ring, the one made from “recycled gold”? Where was the boyfriend she’d begun dating in college, who supported her so much during her campaign? Things change.

In the videos, she sits alone in her apartment, looking especially beautiful—at times excited and at others a bit vulnerable. In fact, she looked like a woman who takes you aside to tell you she’s pregnant, not that she’s embarking on a moon shot. She talked about the current administration and its practice of “punishing us around our decision to be pregnant or not to be pregnant.”

Freezing your eggs is the universal signal for “Don’t rush me!” It’s the answer for your mother and aunts and the girl in the break room, who poke at you endlessly about when, when, when are you going to have a baby? And it’s a warm, Xanax-infused bath for any woman who feels her time to have a baby might be running out. Out here in real life you may be aging a little bit more with each passing year, but down there in the deep freeze, the real you—perfect and never getting a moment older than you were on the day you had the procedure—is safe. It will never be too late.