AOC Opens Up About Freezing Her Eggs Amid 2028 Speculation

All right, I did my whole day, filmed it. I still have some of the TV makeup on from this morning, but I will post some of the footage from this morning. But before I do that, I'm gonna dive into some of the questions that you all left in the AMA last night. And I'll try to get some quick answers out. And as this process continues, I will film more dedicated videos that go in depth into any one of these questions. Though cutting straight to the chase, this was one of the things that was most stressful for me as well when I was considering doing this is cost. My insurance does not cover one penny of this. It is 100% out of pocket. It doesn't go to my deductible, nothing. It covers nothing. So there's two main sources of costs. So you don't just like pay one lump sum to the doctor. You pay for the medicine, and then you also pay your clinic and for the procedure. So there's two costs of it. Some places are very expensive. I am going to a place in New York City that specifically designs options for women who don't have insurance covering it. And so my grand total personally for me all in is gonna be probably between eight to $9,000. There are places less. And now that's the headline. However, if you are like me and in a position a couple years ago where you were kind of really stressed about that cost, there's a couple of things to keep in mind. One is that a big variable of your cost is your medication. And it's not the same medication for everybody. It is really based on your individual situation. So your doses may be more expensive. Your doses may be less expensive. And on top of that, because our medical system is so broken, I shopped around. There are some pharmacies that were quoting me seven grand when I gave them my insurance information, even though my insurance doesn't cover any of this medicine, that then when I paid out of pocket, that price went down to three grand. I checked at Costco. Different pharmacies give different prices too. So the medication piece for me is costing me about $3,500, let's say, around ballpark there. And that's the one bucket. But other pharmacies would probably quote you different numbers. The other piece of this is the actual clinic and procedure and your provider. And a lot of clinics actually don't require you to pay in a lump sum. I saved a long time for this. And so I'm just paying for it outright after years of saving. But there are clinics that do offer kind of a payment plan for people who need to pursue this or want to pursue this and want financial options. I'm not here to advocate for any of that. That's a decision for you to make. But that's the... Different clinics will have different prices because their care model is different. And so some clinics will charge you $15,000 to $16,000. Others will charge less. And on top of this, because of our medical system is broken in the way that it is, because we neglect covering women's care and women's fertility care, there's also the option that... And I know people who have pursued this who have frozen their eggs outside of the United States in places like Spain or Mexico. And some of you all have even talked about the fact that some of you all have frozen your eggs in places like Spain for $4,000 all in medication clinic. Oh, and on top of that, you have to pay to store your eggs too. And so I'd be paying about $1,200 a year to keep my eggs frozen after that. But some people... And so when it comes to cost, one thing that I want to say is that I know that those numbers for a lot of people can feel paralyzing. And just talking about money in general can be a very emotionally intense thing. Not long ago in my life, I was working as a waitress in downtown Manhattan and the thought of that was so paralyzing. And then when you actually pair that with all of the horrible rhetoric that we as women are fed as a society about our fertility, et cetera, it's easy to feel frozen and like a failure, right? Like if I either can't afford this or if I can't afford it, then I'm going to have a negative consequence. And I want to push back on that real quick. Number one, there is so much negative messaging that is directed towards women around our family choices. Period. 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 dysregulate women, to put us in a place of fear or insecurity so that we are making choices out of that place. We're not doing that. All of these men, oftentimes, who are saying, oh, if you haven't had a kid by 30, like you're done, it's just not supported. Don't trust these people who are writing abortion laws that don't even understand the first thing about a woman's body, tell you about how many eggs you have, at what age. They don't even understand about egg health or anything. Number two, it's also not an all or nothing prospect. My number one piece of advice is that if you're curious about this, if you're not sure about cost, if you're on the fence about if this is something you want to do or not, a great small step you can take that can really empower you is to get your fertility checked. And that can be anywhere between $100 and $400 to do. I've seen people do it for 100 bucks, 200 bucks. You go in, it's a little bit of blood work and an ultrasound. They will give you your follicle count. And then some short time after that, they will give you something known as an AMH level in your blood, which is like, it's a general kind of ballpark around your fertility. And it is so empowering to receive that information because you can make a choice based on you. All right, everyone. I am going to be doing a very special unboxing video. I just got this box delivered to my apartment and I will be unboxing my fertility medication. So there are a lot of very different reasons why someone would choose to freeze their eggs. One is sometimes something like a cancer diagnosis. Thank God, that is not something that I have received, but if you are diagnosed with cancer or have a cancer scare, the chemotherapy can threaten your egg reserve. And so some people that have a recent cancer diagnosis, some of you have written in and talked about this, means that you will freeze your eggs so that you have the option to have a child later after you go through treatment. Another is sometimes not, you don't freeze your eggs for your first kid, but sometimes you want the option to maybe have an easier time conceiving for your second or third or fourth child. And so sometimes it's just the option to be able to grow a family at a later date, not even at the immediate. A third reason could be ambiguity. Maybe you aren't sure if you want kids or not. And you freeze your eggs to preserve a little bit of optionality for yourself. A fourth reason could be that, you know, there are a lot of women out there that really want to be moms and are really looking for their person. And so much of this discussion around parenthood and fertility is focused on women, but it takes two to tango. And they haven't found their person. They haven't found a man that they think would be a suitable partner or father or a partner in general, regardless of gender. And they want to have a little bit of breathing room so that they don't feel pressured to enter parenthood with someone that they wouldn't otherwise choose. And last is genetic testing. Some people are carriers for severe genetic conditions and you can freeze your eggs to maximize viability. Quite a few people have asked, how long does a frozen egg stay good for? And the answer is pretty much indefinitely. Frozen eggs are good. Once they are frozen, their biological integrity is preserved for as long as they remain frozen for. So there you have it. Okay. Anyways, it's 7.45, 7.44 in the morning. Driving to the studio at ABC. We're gonna do a quick outfit check. Blue pants, blue blazer, and a lunchbox from Target. $15 with thousands of dollars in medicine inside. And we're gonna see how this goes. All right, yeah! We're at ABC, we're getting glam right before. Say hi! Hi! This beautiful thing. She-ra! All right, here we go. Lunchbox. Let's see if I can speed run. I'm gonna speed run. Shot here yesterday, so I'm gonna do it here today. This one takes a while actually. Nevermind, that one didn't take a while. Yesterday it took longer. All right, this is a spicy one. Done! That's on people saying women are too emotional to lead. Because I was able to keep my cool on a national interview minutes after being injected with plenty of extra hormones, and I was fine. In fact, probably kept a more level head than some of my lovely male colleagues across government that you see. So, and also so many of them talk about injecting testosterone and are obsessed with it. And no one bats an eye at that. So why are we, like, people need hormones also for all sorts of different reasons? We should stop being weird about it. It's fine.