"Not helpful": White House winces over conservatives bashing AOC for egg freezing
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) prepares an injection before appearing on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday. Screenshot: @aoc via Instagram
When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted a video Saturday giving herself a shot in preparation to freeze her eggs, she instantly injected issues of fertility, family and feminism into political discourse.
- And some of the online backlash from the conservative right is making Republicans, including some in the White House, a little nervous.
Why it matters: The New York Democrat's Instagram announcement — "Don't be weird about this, even though I know all of you will be," she said — dominated social media and furthered speculation that AOC is plotting a White House run in two years.
Friction point: The left cheered the 36-year-old on. The right was divided between conservatives who want the U.S. birthrate to increase and those critical of women delaying pregnancy.
- "She'll turn 37 in a couple months. If she got pregnant now, it would technically be a geriatric pregnancy," conservative commentator Matt Walsh posted on X. "This desire to start having children late in life is completely baffling to me."
- "Conservative men dunking on AOC for freezing her eggs is not a winning message with women voters," replied Alexa Henning, a MAGA consultant who recently left the State Department.
- "I have many conservative friends who, because they decided to put careers, first froze their eggs and had have babies and families later in life," Henning added. "That should be celebrated."
Inside the room: At the White House, where President Trump has championed in-vitro fertilization, there's clearly a desire to embrace Henning's point of view.
- "We most certainly want to encourage more women and families to have children, period," a senior White House official said. "That's a diplomatic way of saying, 'Yes, the Matt Walsh messaging is not helpful.' "
- "This isn't really a winner for Republicans," a Trump adviser said, noting the midterm elections are less than three months away.
- Republican pollster Adam Geller echoed that point: "AOC knows how to get attention. She knows how to stand out. This should be treated as a stunt. And my advice to Republicans is, don't take the bait."
The big picture: In the attention economy of today's reality-show politics, creating viral moments is the coin of the realm that comes naturally to millennial digital natives like AOC.
- AOC's announcement also carried the extra political payoff of uniting Democrats and dividing Republicans.
- "This is a choice that I am making to feel more in control of my life," she said.
Between the lines: Katie Miller, a conservative podcaster and wife of Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, told Axios she didn't believe this would be a "major issue" in the midterms, and she questioned how successful egg-freezing is.
- "Some kids are better than zero kids," Miller said. "If you're going to increase the birthrate, you can't be a purist about how it happens. The most efficient way to have babies is the old-fashioned way: Get married, have children young."
- Another conservative podcast host, Allie Beth Stuckey, questioned why Ocasio-Cortez hadn't had children by now with her longtime partner and criticized the Democrat on X for "glamorizing the lie that women can have it all. You can't. Biology is real and how you order your life makes or breaks your future."
- That prompted yet another disagreement from a fellow conservative woman who replied: "Your life decisions shouldn't be determined by an online army of self-appointed morality officers with an agenda."
