Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

Over the weekend, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted a video of herself doing a hormone injection as part of the process of freezing her eggs. “Don’t be weird about this,” she says, “even though I know all of you will be.”

And, yes, everyone got super weird about it.

AOC is 36, which led much of the right-wing internet (and some of the left-wing internet) to jump on her choice. Why doesn’t she just have a baby with the guy she’s with? Egg freezing at 36 is pointless! Egg freezing doesn’t guarantee you a baby! Having children after 40 is selfish! “She’s glamorizing the lie that women can have it all!”

Most of these comments are coming from the same people who disparage childless women, and who disparage single mothers, judge working mothers, and want to pull benefits from mothers who are poor and have children they can’t afford to feed. In the conservative universe, there is only one correct way to be a mother, and that’s to be married at a young age to a breadwinner man upon whom you are wholly dependent, to not work for pay, and to have as many children as possible—but if your husband doesn’t make enough money to support you all, or if he turns out to be a jerk, or if he dies, well, you’re an idiot and a bad mother for being poor/choosing the wrong man/not having a better life plan.

The response on the left was largely to leave AOC alone, because her freezing her eggs is none of our business. But she’s a congresswoman who posted about it online—she made it the public’s business. There’s something very powerful there: She’s demystifying a process that can still be shrouded in unnecessary secrecy, and making a choice many women have at least considered. She’s also opening up a broader conversation about the choices and trade-offs adults have to make when it comes to love, life, work, and family. And we can have that conversation without being super weird about it, or about AOC herself.

I don’t know why AOC has chosen to freeze her eggs. But I know why many women whom I know have chosen to freeze their eggs. For the most part, they did so because they were not yet in a position where they wanted to have a child but wanted to preserve the possibility in the future. Most of........

© Slate