Why Women Freeze Their Eggs
By Elise Wilkins
During the egg-freezing process, eggs aren’t the only things being frozen — so is time. A frozen egg from a thirty-year old woman will always behave like an egg from a thirty-year old. Since 2012, when the American Society for Reproductive Medicine announced that egg freezing was no longer an experimental treatment, many more women have undergone the procedure.
Oocyte cryopreservation, or egg freezing, is a process that has been around for decades. During this process, eggs are removed from a person’s ovary and then frozen and stored for use in a potential later pregnancy. The first human birth from a frozen oocyte took place in 1986, but egg freezing has only started to become popular in the last decade. Before the removal of the experimental label from this treatment, egg freezing was mainly used for women who were dealing with medical conditions that affected their fertility — most commonly, chemotherapy treatment for cancer. However, as egg freezing has become more available, more women are taking advantage of the opportunity to extend their fertility beyond the expected decrease in fertility after age thirty.
The process of freezing eggs starts with a series of hormone injections to help stimulate the follicles, which are sacs in the ovary that store eggs. During this series of injections, the woman must visit a fertility clinic every other day so that her ovaries can be monitored by a vaginal ultrasound. After about ten days, the eggs are retrieved by guiding a gauge catheter, which is a hollow needle, through the vagina towards the ovarian follicle. The retrieval process takes about ten minutes and is performed under mild anesthesia or sedation. This whole process describes one egg-freezing cycle. Women who choose to undergo more than one cycle to retrieve more eggs have a better chance of a viable pregnancy.
The frequency of hormone injections and clinic visits can be draining, both physically and financially. One cycle of egg freezing can cost anywhere from $4,500 to $8,000, not including the cost of hormones and the storage costs, which can be greater than $500 per year. Because of the financial barriers, there is a very specific demographic of women in the U.S. who tend to freeze their eggs — white, middle-class professionals.
The majority of women who freeze their eggs today do so for personal reasons rather than medical conditions. But why is there such a strong desire to preserve fertility? For some women, the demands of their careers are not suitable for raising children, so egg freezing allows them to keep their hope of having children without sacrificing their careers. Others do so because they have yet to find a partner. For some women, freezing their eggs provides them with the security of knowing that they don’t have to rush into a relationship and have kids while they are in the prime of their child-bearing years.
The reasons that women may choose to freeze their eggs highlight the tension between professional life and motherhood. This tension has been recognized by some employers, and many companies now offer benefits to employees to cover the expenses of egg freezing. While only large companies like Facebook and Apple initially offered financial coverage for egg freezing, this practice has extended to many more companies. Egg freezing is often a part of a company’s coverage of fertility-related ventures such as adoption, surrogacy, and in vitro fertilization. An article from CNBC describes the prevalence of these benefits, writing “As of 2020, more than two-fifths (42%) of large U.S. employers — those with over 20,000 staff — offered coverage for IVF treatment, while almost one-fifth (19%) offered egg freezing. For smaller companies with over 500 employees, those figures were 27% and 11%, respectively.”
Clearly, companies increasingly value helping women plan their parenthood. However, not every woman has this opportunity. The high cost of egg freezing makes it very difficult for people to cover the costs, and without funding from their jobs, women who are working in small companies may have limited access to this procedure. The economic barrier to egg freezing affects both those who are seeking the procedure for personal reasons and those who are facing medical conditions that affect their fertility.
With only a decade having passed since egg freezing became accessible to more people, there are many unknowns about the extent of the impact of egg freezing. While some women are relieved to be able to wait to have kids, the reality is that there’s only a 39% birth rate from frozen eggs. Most women who freeze their eggs don’t even end up using them for pregnancy. Egg freezing is not necessarily about the promise of prolonged fertility, but about the possibility. The women who participate in egg freezing — but don’t use them — can still have peace of mind in knowing that they have one less restriction from living their lives on their own terms.
Citations
Colino, S. (2023c, February 22). Social vs. medical egg freezing: What’s the difference? Science. Retrieved April 7, 2023, from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/social-vs-medical-egg-freezing-whats-the-difference-fertility-age?rnd=1680894958504&loggedin=true
Gilchrist, K. (2022, October 5). Egg freezing, IVF and surrogacy: Fertility benefits have evolved to become the Ultimate Workplace Perk. CNBC. Retrieved April 13, 2023, from https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/14/egg-freezing-ivf-surrogacy-fertility-benefits-are-the-new-work-perk.html
Gupta, A. H., & Blum, D. (2022, December 28). 7 Women on Egg Freezing: Hope, Regret, Uncertainty. The New York Times. Retrieved April 7, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/23/well/family/egg-freezing-fertility.html
Kallen, C. (2022, September 23). 22 egg freezing facts. Shady Grove Fertility. Retrieved April 13, 2023, from https://www.shadygrovefertility.com/article/22-egg-freezing-facts/#:~:text=Egg%20freezing%20can%20extend%20the,eggs%20are%20used%20when%20the
PBS NewsHour. 7 things every woman should know before freezing her eggs. (2014, December 10). Retrieved April 7, 2023, from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/freeze-eggs#:~:text=The%20process%20of%20egg%2Dfreezing,thawed%20at%20a%20later%20date.
UCLA Health. Egg Freezing. (n.d.). Retrieved April 7, 2023, from https://www.uclahealth.org/medical-services/obgyn/fertility/egg-freezing
