One of the most high-profile congresswomen in the United States has caused a stir in Maga circles after revealing that she is freezing her eggs.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive Democrat from New York, posted a video on social media announcing that she was undergoing the process and answering questions around the subject, sharing footage as she injected herself with hormones.

The 36-year-old, often known as AOC, said that she wanted to show that women could have “full lives in every context and every choice” without their decisions about relationships and children becoming a political liability.

“There is very strangely a political risk, or a political tax, that comes with sharing this info,” she said in her Instagram story, adding that “this is a choice that I am making to feel more in control of my life”.

The timing has fuelled speculation about whether she is preparing for a campaign for higher office. Hours after announcing her decision, she appeared on ABC News’s , where she did not rule out the possibility of running for president in 2028.

She warned that women in American politics faced a “political risk” when they spoke openly about fertility, pointing out that female politicians face very different questions to those posed to men and were often expected to explain their private lives. “This is just not something that men deal with,” she said in one video.

“Kind of no matter what choice you make, if you have kids, when you have kids, whatever, there’s so much negativity, and it is designed to disregulate women, to put us in a place of fear or insecurity so that we are making choices out of that place,” she said in a video. “We’re not doing that.”

Soon after her announcement, proving her point, Trump-aligned critics weighed in to criticise her decision, deriding it as a “cautionary tale” for women.

Andrew Kolvet, spokesman for Turning Point USA, the right-wing organisation with strong ties to Trump’s Maga movement, characterised Ocasio-Cortez’s decision as reflective of a broader progressive message of prioritising careers over starting families, which he suggested was to blame for falling birthrates.

“This is the message progressives spread when it comes to family formation, and one of the reasons why fertility rates are cratering,” Kolvet wrote on X. “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.

“AOC turns 37 in a few weeks so if she got pregnant tomorrow it would already be a geriatric pregnancy. This is not female ‘liberation,’ it’s a cautionary tale.”

Laura Loomer, the conspiracy theorist Maga influencer accused her of a “political stunt” intended to manufacture a “sob story”.

“AOC is freezing her eggs at 36 because she wants to try to ‘relate’ to women when she runs for President in 2028. She knows freezing eggs at 36 when you’ve been engaged for 4 years is a lost cause,” she said in a series of posts on X. “So she wants a sob story about infertility when she does decide to run for President”.

Meanwhile, the Fox News contributor and conversative writer Mollie Hemingway said: “Ladies, get married to a good man as young as you’re able and have your babies and do it naturally,” she wrote. “This is a very sad public performance/display of unnecessarily unwise decision making.”

Catherine Rottenberg, professor in cultural studies at Goldsmiths, University of London and author of Performing Americanness and The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism, said AOC’s decision to freeze her eggs was “important and thoroughly political” given the rolling back of reproductive rights in the US.

“In the context of her public and political position – and in the context of Maga’s uneven attempts to criminalise abortion, it is an important statement about women’s right to make their own reproductive decisions and to bodily autonomy.

“We are living in reactionary times,” she added, pointing to “authoritarian neoliberalism, where there are intensified attacks on feminism, LGBTQI+ rights”.

Ocasio-Cortez said the ability to freeze her eggs was a “very privileged position”, but she did not say whether she intended to have children. Instead, she used the announcement to question why female candidates could be judged by their perceived plans for motherhood in ways that male politicians are not.

“Men run for office, or frankly, they interview for jobs, and people don’t think in the back of their minds, ‘OK, this guy’s running for office, how old is he? Oh, well, is he going to want to start a family?’” she said.

Rottenberg said: “Women’s reproductive choices are weaponised against women in general and female politicians more specifically in multiple ways.” She attributed this to a widespread assumption that “women and mothers are the primary caretakers and the growing Maga and right-wing insistence that women’s natural place is in the home”.

Amy Friedrich Karnik, director of federal policy at the Guttmacher Institute, an organisation committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights in the US, said: “Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s openness about her decision to freeze her eggs is an important step towards normalising a process utilised by thousands of people to achieve reproductive and bodily autonomy. Of course, we know – and as she pointed out – assisted reproductive technology, including IVF, is inaccessible to a wide swathe of Americans who would maybe choose this path if it was available to them.

“Despite his promises, President Trump’s policies have failed to expand access to IVF. At the same time, the administration has supported policies that restrict access to reproductive health care, including access to abortion care, contraception, fertility care, and opposed policies that actually support people’s ability to raise families. It’s clear this administration is more interested in controlling people’s lives than it is in enabling reproductive autonomy, including for many who want to have children.” 

Other high-profile female politicians have previously challenged traditional norms around parenthood and power. Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s youngest female prime minister, faced a backlash when she announced her pregnancy just three months after taking office, aged 37, in 2018.

“It is totally unacceptable in 2017 to say that women should have to answer that question in the workplace,” she told a radio host who took issue with the move. “It is a woman’s decision about when they choose to have children, and it should not predetermine whether or not they are given a job or have job opportunities.”

Rottenberg said: “Spending too much time at work (and thus not partaking in caregiving) is never weaponised against men. The assumption is that some woman is at home taking care of the children.”

The issue has particular resonance for Ocasio-Cortez, who has spent much of her political career campaigning on reproductive rights. She was among several members of Congress arrested at an abortion rights demonstration outside the US Supreme Court in Washington in July 2022, and co-sponsored a bill to codify abortion rights into federal law.

She told ABC this weekend: “In this political environment, where this administration is denying reproductive care to women across the country, from abortion rights to the ability to carry out a healthy pregnancy, I think it’s important for us as leaders to have these conversations.”

She described the prospect of undergoing treatment while working as a congresswoman as “badass”.

“Because women can do anything. And I think it’s badass that I’m gonna be giving myself shots in the green room, get my glam on, roll out, talk international events, domestic policy, elections, pop out, live my life, do my thing,” she said.

At least one Maga voice expressed support for Ocasio-Cortez. Katie Miller, the wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, said Republicans should “celebrate” her decision. “If one woman wants to preserve her right to have children, which means more than having none — we should celebrate that. If she inspires other women to have babies, we should celebrate that,” she said on X.

The i Paper has approached Ocasio-Cortez’s office for comment.