AOC Gets Emotional, Blames Climate Change for Her 'Dreams of Motherhood' Being 'Bittersweet'
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told a summit this week that climate change has made her plans to have children “bittersweet.”
Ocasio-Cortez was speaking Friday at the C40 climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.
“I speak to you not as an elected official or public figure. But I speak to you as a human being,” she said.
“A woman whose dreams of motherhood now taste bittersweet because of what I know about our children’s future and that our actions are responsible for bringing their most dire possibilities into focus,” she added.
Ocasio-Cortez then claimed a combination of climate change and politics devastated Puerto Rico.
“I speak to you as daughter and descendant of colonized peoples who have already begun to suffer. Just two years ago one of the deadliest disasters in the United States struck in the form of Hurricane Maria,” she said.
“The climate change-powered storm killed over 3,000 Puerto Ricans, American citizens — my own grandfather died in the aftermath — all because they were living under colonial rule, which contributed to the dire conditions and lack of recovery,” she said, according to Fox News.
She claimed it was not a coincidence that when Hurricane Dorian swept through the Atlantic Ocean this year, it brought devastation to the Bahamas.
“As many have noticed in an — noted in an awful turn the climate crisis … is first impacting those who have not only contributed to our emissions the least but have already suffered greatly in the global history of inequality, colonization and imperialism stacking one injustice upon another,” she said.
Many social media users replied to the speech with a large dose of mockery.
The only thing stopping you from having children Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is third-wave feminism telling you motherhood and family are a terrible thing. https://t.co/BCPbeAFVlJ
— Will Gillespie (@WillGillespie2) October 12, 2019
Oh please she’s too self centered to care for anyone else. https://t.co/EXYakgkncf
— ???????? ? ? ?? (@janal811) October 12, 2019
Ocasio-Cortez says her “dreams of motherhood” are “bittersweet” due to the fact that a baby might take attention away from her.
— Eric Langston (@eric_langst0n) October 11, 2019
Ocasio-Cortez has claimed in the past that climate change is impacting any plans she has to have children.
“Even now, you know when you put climate change on top of that, I know that I want to perhaps have one less child than I thought I would maybe have,” she said in August, according to Breitbart.
“I think having a mixed family is part of my personal planning. But it’s really hard, and I don’t think sometimes that older generations understand how much we’re taking this into account,” she said.
In February, Ocasio-Cortez said the issue was not simply her personal dilemma, but an obligatory global piece of soul-searching, Fox News reported.
“Our planet is going to face disaster if we don’t turn this ship around,” she said at the time.
“And so it’s basically like, there is a scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult and it does lead, I think young people, to have a legitimate question. You know, should — is it OK to still have children?”
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