Freezing Eggs Is One Step Toward A Fatherless Dystopia

Over the weekend, AOC announced to the world that she is freezing her eggs. She claims the message “educates” and “empowers” women. It does not. Her unsolicited declaration perpetuates a myth that women can have the ideal life whenever they want without consequence. It also makes it likely that even more children will grow up in fatherless homes.

The democratic socialist congresswoman’s decision was surprising to many people given her 11-year relationship and four-year engagement to fiancé Riley Roberts. Freezing your eggs at 36 when you already have a partner you claim to love seems unnecessary and raised suspicions. The media later reported that the couple quietly ended their relationship two years ago.

If true, AOC’s motives are even more transparent. In addition to clicks and attention, she wants insurance for the moment when she does decide to have a family that she’ll have viable eggs to do so — even if there is no man in the picture.

With their “pro-family at any age” argument, some conservatives are condemning those who criticize AOC’s choices. Conservatives cannot be the pro-family party without supporting egg freezing, they say.

What they fail to acknowledge is that encouraging women to freeze their eggs opens the door to an influx of fatherless children. Nothing could be less “pro-family” or worse for society than that. Research shows that children raised in a two-parent household — specifically with a mother and a father — find more success in life, whether that be educational, financial, health, or emotional.

Feminism succeeded in convincing women that financial gain, upward mobility, and independence were admirable goals — more admirable than finding a partner and starting a family. Thus, America is now filled with so many successful, independent, and single women that it’s often called the “Sheconomy.” Women comprise nearly half the U.S. labor force, and single women, almost a quarter.

Many women wear this status as a badge of honor. Songs are written to glamorize it. Movies are produced to sell it. However, it has also made finding a worthy partner more challenging for these women.

They no longer choose a partner for financial stability or a man’s ability to be a good father. They choose based on credentials that are often difficult to meet, adopting a romanticized version of love sold by Hollywood.

Women still tend to want to “marry up,” but when they already have successful careers, a house, and multiple degrees, the bar is very high for most men to clear. Many women say they can’t find a mate that meets their standards.

Feminism has taught women that, in fact, they don’t need a man and then, through policy and cultural shifts, concocted a society to make that possible, even without large paychecks.

Yet, biology is real, and women can’t outrun Father Time or Mother Nature. That clock will start ticking. Why not have a child without a father? they ask. A woman like AOC can now afford it on her own (or with likely increasing government subsidies), culture has told her it’s “bad ass” and “empowering” to freeze her eggs, and science has figured out how to impregnate her without a husband, calling it “reproductive care.”

This puts the desires of adults before the needs of children, as Katy Faust, founder of Them Before Us, often points out. The purpose of a marriage is the “establishment of an environment that’s beneficial to children,” Jordan Peterson says, not the happiness of the husband and wife.

Society has delayed and then medicalized the most natural part of a woman’s life cycle — getting married and having children. It seems the harder we try to optimize women’s lives, the more miserable they are.

Rather than manufacturing unnatural solutions to today’s declining replacement rates, health agencies and researchers should focus on uncovering the root causes of delayed marriage and inability to conceive, and restore the proper purpose of marriage.

Science has done many wonderful things, but redefining family and re-engineering the natural order and goodness of family is not one of them.

The first and most crucial bond for a healthy society is marriage and the natural family. Disrupting it places primacy on the state, which is why our country has found itself increasingly engulfed by federal policy and bureaucratic solutions.

Maybe this is why AOC is encouraging women to freeze eggs, even with the potential financial and health risks involved. More women having babies without fathers means more opportunities for the state to step in.

A home with a mother and a father in a loving relationship is the best scenario to raise a healthy child. While that is not always possible, freezing eggs will not get us closer to that ideal situation — it will push us further away. AOC’s choices are not a model to uphold.

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Jennifer Galardi is a Senior Policy Analyst for Restoring American Wellness at the Heritage Foundation.