The right has never been able to have a normal relationship with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Their intense dislike for the progressive, democratic socialist lawmaker is often coupled with a sexual fixation on AOC that rears its head in all manner of perversities — from graphic AI pornography, to Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld’s repeat on-air sexual fantasizing about the congresswoman, to the obsession with her status as a childless woman focused on her career in elected office rather than having a bunch of kids.
Over the weekend, when Ocasio-Cortez, 36, decided to share her decision to freeze her eggs with her massive online following and document her first round of hormonal injections, she begged people watching to not “be weird about this even though I know you all will be.”
And boy are right-wingers being weird about it. After years giving unsolicited your-ovaries-will-dry-out advice to Ocasio-Cortez (and plenty of other liberal women who have yet to have children), the right is now upset that their favorite vessel for misogynistic target practice is taking steps to plan out the family they insist she should have.
Right-wing commentator Benny Johnson — who on Sunday gushed on social media about how rewarding it was to have children and be a father — posted a video to his YouTube channel titled “AOC Shocks Internet: Lifts Up Her Shirt To Reveal Her Medical Treatment.” The thumbnail image featured an AI-generated image (from a suspiciously low angle) of the congresswoman lifting up her top to inject her stomach. A box graphic of Johnson looking disgusted hovered over her shoulder.
Daily Wire host Matt Walsh chided AOC as “totally backwards and ridiculous” for wanting to delay having children past the ripe old age of 36. “If she got pregnant now, it would technically be a geriatric pregnancy. Instead she’s freezing her eggs. This desire to start having children late in life is completely baffling to me. I’ll have kids in theirs 20s by the time I turn 50. AOC apparently wants to have a toddler at that age,” he wrote, as if it’s any of his business.
Andrew Kolvet, spokesperson for Turning Point USA and a regular host on The Charlie Kirk Show, denounced AOC for both freezing her eggs, and sharing the experience. “This is not female ‘liberation,’ it’s a cautionary tale,” he wrote on social media. “This is the message progressives spread when it comes to family formation, and one of the reasons why fertility rates are cratering. Just freeze your eggs, kids! Pursue that career, even if you’ve been engaged for 4 years to a man you’ve known since college.”
The congresswoman has been notoriously private about her relationship with her fiance Riley Roberts, who proposed to her in 2022. The long engagement — coupled with AOC’s move to bank her eggs — are now fueling conspiratorial claims about the nature of their relationship and the reasons they haven’t tied the knot. Christina Pushaw, communications strategist for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, speculated that the couple were avoiding a marriage as a “loophole” to skirt scrutiny of Roberts’ finances. In a post shared by Pushaw, another user suggested that “so long as they remain legally unmarried, Roberts’ stock trades remain secret.”
Trump adviser Laura Loomer — herself 33 years old and childless — complained that she wished she could “go back to the days when women kept their reproductive health private. I don’t really want to know about anyone’s reproductive journey, to be honest.”
“I’m not really bothered by someone freezing their eggs, whether they want kids or don’t want kids. I just think it’s ironic that a woman who encouraged other women to ruin their uterus by getting multiple abortions is now trying to freeze her eggs so she can have a child as a prop for when she runs for President in 2028,” Loomer added.
Ocasio-Cortez has been unruffled amid the backlash. Her videos focused on some of the challenges other women might need to navigate should they choose to freeze their eggs, including insurance issues, costs, medications, and the struggle of having her fertility under a political microscope.
“There is so much negative messaging that is directed towards women around our family choices,” she said on Instagram. “It is designed to dysregulate women. To put us in a place of fear or insecurity, so that we are making choices out of that place.”
“Don’t listen to these men,” she added, and she’s taking her own advice.
