Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “I was raped, but then I could have chosen whether to have an abortion”

“When I was 22 or 23, I was raped. I used to live here in New York. I was completely alone, I felt completely alone. So lonely that I had to take a pregnancy test in a public bathroom in midtown Manhattan. ” The story, not unpublished, is that of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in front of hundreds of pro-abortion protesters in Union Square, in the heart of Manhattan.

The Democratic congresswoman was among the first to speak after the US Supreme Court ruling overturned what made abortion federally legal in the US. She did it too with a very personal memory. “When I was sitting there waiting for the result, all I had to think about was: thank God I have, at least, a choice. Thank God I can, at least, have the freedom to choose my destiny. I didn’t know then that the test would come back negative. But it doesn’t count. ” That choice no longer exists at the federal level in the US after the Supreme Court ruling, individual states will decide and many will not allow termination of pregnancy.

The story of that moment, sitting in a New York bathroom, praying for a negative test and still hoping for a safe and legal abortion, is hers, but it is also common to many women. For this reason, her words seem to count more than those of other democratic representatives. She says it in front of the women, in demonstration. At 32 she can be one of them. You have attacked the Supreme Court, congressional representatives, the governor of Texas and Republican women. “It concerns everyone, it is not a question of women’s rights, but of all of us.” And again: “A forced pregnancy is a crime against humanity”.

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