Washington — Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had one request for the internet as she pointed at the camera and injected the first shot of her egg-freezing protocol: “Don’t be weird about this, even though I know all of you will be.”
“That wasn’t so bad,” she said after she injected the shot into her lower abdomen.
The 36-year-old representative from New York — and a potential 2028 presidential hopeful — is spending her August recess freezing her eggs, joining tens of thousands of women in the U.S. who have undergone the same journey in hopes of having children at some point in the future.
After a fertility clinic is decided upon and initial tests are run, the process involves about two weeks of daily self-iinjections of hormones and regular visits to the fertility clinic. Next comes a “trigger shot,” followed by a retrieval of the eggs under sedation. Then, the eggs are flash-frozen and stored.
Ocasio-Cortez said she’ll be documenting the process and answering questions women have. The cost, she said, was one of the most stressful parts for her as she considered the process — at least $8,000 for her. Those costs can run as high as $15,000 to $20,000 per cycle, plus monthly or annual storage costs, and generally aren’t covered by insurance. That doesn’t include the thawing of the eggs or the IVF process. The Trump administration has taken steps to try to bring down the cost of the medication involved.
“My insurance does not cover one penny of this,” Ocasio-Cortez said in her Instagram story. “It is 100% out of pocket. It doesn’t go to my deductible. Nothing. It covers nothing.”
Ocasio-Cortez’ decision to freeze her eggs is only fueling more speculation about her potential 2028 ambitions. She said on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday that she hasn’t ruled out running for president or the U.S. Senate.
“This is a choice that I am making to feel more in control of my life,” she said on Instagram.
Some online detractors criticized Ocasio-Cortez, noting her age and questioning why she doesn’t go ahead and have children now. Still, other women shared their stories of egg freezing and how glad they were that they went through the process.
For women considering egg freezing, CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Céline Gounder said age at the time of freezing is the biggest factor in their ultimate success rate. Egg quality and quantity declines with age.
“Age at freezing is the biggest predictor of whether you can have a live birth,” Gounder, who is also editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News, said on “CBS Mornings.” “So women who froze at 35 or younger had about a 50% live birth rate, whereas if you wait until after 40, that drops to about 20%. So younger is better.”
Those figures are per IVF cycle. Another thing to consider, Gounder said, is that pregnancy at an older age still carries risks for the mother and the baby, regardless of how young the woman was when she froze her eggs.
“There is no guarantee of success,” she said. “So of the eggs that are frozen, about 80% will survive thawing, and then each step of IVF, you see a decrease in probability. The stat to ask for is live births per patient by age of freezing.”
Women choose to freeze their eggs for a number of reasons, but lacking a current partner tops the list in surveys.
A UCLA Health study found that relatively few women who freeze their eggs return for them in the next few years. The study, published last year, found that only 5.7% of women who froze their eggs between 2014 and 2016 returned to use them within the study’s follow-up period of five to seven years.
Men’s fertility declines with age, too. As Gounder noted, a British study of 8,515 planned pregnancies found men 40 and older had about half the odds conceiving within a year as their counterparts under 25.
