Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is breaking down the costs associated with freezing her eggs after revealing she’s taking control of her reproductive future.
“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,” the congresswoman, 36, said in a video shared via her Instagram Stories on Sunday, August 9. “My insurance does not cover one penny of this. It is 100 percent out of pocket. It doesn’t go to my deductible — nothing. It covers nothing.”
On Saturday, August 8, the Democrat representing New York City’s 14th congressional district revealed she had made the personal decision to freeze her eggs amid ongoing speculation she may one day be a frontrunner for the Democratic nominee for president.
“I want to share with you all a decision that is very personal that I have made that has taken me time to consider, weigh and save up for,” she said in a video also shared via her Instagram Stories. “And it is of a sensitive matter and a personal matter and usually I keep my private life quite private, but I have made the decision to start freezing my eggs.”
Ocasio-Cortez went on to break down her personal cost of the procedure, noting that it can vary depending on a variety of factors including the clinic type, where the patient lives, medication needed and insurance costs for those who can obtain coverage.
“So, there are two main sources of costs,” she explained in her Sunday upload. “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.”
She added, “So the grand total personally, for me, all in, is going to be probably between $8,000 and $9,000.”
Earlier on Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez made an appearance on ABC’s This Week, telling host Jonathan Karl why she decided to go public — and document the experience for her millions of social media followers — about her decision to freeze her eggs.
“I think, um, it’s important for us to normalize these conversations, especially in this political environment,” she said. “This [Donald Trump] 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 and share these processes, especially for working women across the country, and normalize them.”
Currently, the United States is the only industrialized nation that does not mandate paid family leave, per the Pew Research Center. The country also has the worst maternal mortality rate of any developed nation — a rate that has only risen after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, which granted pregnant people the Constitutional right to abortion access. States that have banned or severely restricted access to abortion have higher and rising rates of maternal and infant death, according to various studies.
Intensive investigative reporting from various outlets has indicated that at least 12 pregnant women have died since Roe v Wade was overturned.
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