{"id":46163,"date":"2026-08-15T07:14:54","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T02:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=46163"},"modified":"2026-08-15T07:14:54","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T02:14:54","slug":"alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-egg-freezing-journey-doesnt-surprise-me-we-spoke-about-it-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=46163","title":{"rendered":"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s Egg Freezing Journey Doesn\u2019t Surprise Me\u2014We Spoke About It Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"has-dropcap body dropcap\">It came as little surprise to me when Representative <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/topic\/alexandria-ocasio-cortez\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"text link\">Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez<\/a> revealed over the weekend the \u201csensitive\u201d decision to freeze her eggs, trickling the announcement in a series of characteristically candid Instagram Stories. Her reproductive choice was years in the making, one the progressive phenom and maybe-possibly 2028 Democratic presidential hopeful first broached publicly when I profiled her for a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/2020\/10\/becoming-aoc-cover-story-2020?srsltid=AfmBOoqS64G0bCMJHhIwjLYrDURjiGl-otmzhpa6J1bSQofT4eEuLb3-\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"text link\"><em>Vanity Fair<\/em> cover story in 2020.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The then 31-year-old House freshman, impassioned Squad member, and master Trump foil already had the political class frothing over her ambitions\u2014Senate or president? \u2014and the rising star was already contemplating her reproductive future. \u201cI\u2019m sitting here, I\u2019m like, Do I freeze my eggs? Can I afford to do that?\u201d the congresswoman said, laughing a little over breakfast at a Bronx diner (incidentally, eggs), seated in a COVID-era outdoor dining shed. \u201cMy orthodontist was telling me about how she was doing IVF, and I\u2019m, like, asking her what her experience is like.\u201d As a respite from the congressional grind, earlier that year she became a dog mom to her French bulldog, Deco\u2014named for the architectural style found throughout New York\u2014with her longtime partner Riley Roberts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Ocasio-Cortez had a dawning awareness that, as the youngest congresswoman in history, serving in a political body overwhelmingly populated by elder men even in its most diverse incarnation, she\u2019d <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/08\/11\/us\/politics\/egg-freezing-aoc.html\" class=\"external-link text link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/08\/11\/us\/politics\/egg-freezing-aoc.html&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/08\/11\/us\/politics\/egg-freezing-aoc.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">waded into uncharted family-planning territory<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s important for us to talk about it, because women, we have to make these choices that men simply don\u2019t have to make. Very few women have\u2026\u201d Ocasio-Cortez trailed off, seeming to grasp for role models that scarcely existed. She landed on Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth, who made history in 2018 as the first sitting senator to give birth in office. She welcomed her second daughter at age 50.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Almost six years after our interviews, Ocasio-Cortez, now a 36-year-old fourth-termer, is answering the questions she dangled over breakfast. Yes, Ocasio-Cortez is freezing her eggs\u2014 \u201ca choice that I am making to feel more in control of my life,\u201d she said. After saving for \u201cseveral years,\u201d she can, in fact, afford the cost, which she estimates will be between $8,000 to $9,000. Though Deco remains a constant, popping up on her lap as she prepped hormone injections on a coffee table on Instagram, Ocasio-Cortez is reportedly undergoing the fertility procedure without Roberts. According to <em>Puck,<\/em> the couple who first started dating as undergrads at Boston University broke up about 18 months ago. At press time, Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s chief of staff did not respond to <em>Vanity Fair\u2019s<\/em> request for comment. Ocasio-Cortez and Roberts were last publicly photographed together at the 2021 Met Gala, where she famously wore a romantic white Brother Vellies <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/style\/story\/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-met-gala-dress-fine\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"text link\">gown scrawled with \u201cTax the Rich\u201d<\/a> in blood red. She\u2019s high-profile, but their pairing never was.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">That their apparent change in relationship status could have gone unnoticed\u2014<em>in this TikTok-addled clime<\/em>\u2014is a testament to their vigilant approach to privacy. Confirming their engagement in May 2022, shortly after Roberts proposed in Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s ancestral home of Puerto Rico, was a notable exception. Though Roberts featured prominently in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/hollywood\/2019\/05\/knock-down-the-house-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-documentary-netflix-review?srsltid=AfmBOorxiHWHjx1eCatnPMuBJ9X5rS6pnN_8sc9cI5GTjOndfLSyuOCD\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"text link\">2019 Netflix documentary <em>Knock Down the House<\/em><\/a>\u2014filming Ocasio-Cortez on his cell phone at her first debates in Queens, crying behind his red glasses as the two gazed up at the Capitol after her primary victory\u2014he never granted another interview about his longtime partner (believe me, I tried). Friends filled in the blanks, painting Roberts, a web developer and clutch early digital-ad adviser, as the Marty Ginsburg to Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s RBG. According to one, Ocasio-Cortez and Roberts were \u201ctwo awkward, supersmart, like-to-talk-about-issues kind of people that met through this super-wonky, nerdy thing\u201d\u2014a weekly Coffee and Conversation series. The weekend before the 2018 midterms that altered her life\u2014and presumably his too\u2014they drove to a cabin in Woodstock, New York, with a friend and hatched a backup plan: If Ocasio-Cortez lost, they\u2019d buy a massive church for sale, or maybe start a ranch, retreating into crunchy seclusion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It came as little surprise to me when Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez revealed over the weekend the \u201csensitive\u201d decision to freeze her eggs, trickling the announcement in a series of characteristically candid Instagram Stories. Her reproductive choice was years in the making, one the progressive phenom and maybe-possibly 2028 Democratic presidential hopeful first broached publicly when&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a7f465f965eaf4660df21d3\/16:9\/w_1280,c_limit\/GettyImages-2267838399.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrity-gossip"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}