The Independent Online is reporting more women are freezing their eggs as a preemptive fetility treatment.
We can tell from the opening, however, that this article is probably not going to be the most scientific analysis of the matter.
Career women who want a family are freezing their eggs for later use to remove the pressure to find Mr Right, research shows.
But let’s not begin with relying on stereotype in the name of accuractly characterizing study results!
The difficulty of finding a partner to father their children is a key reason why women try to preserve their fertility into their 40s, the first study of motives behind egg freezing reveals.
First, let’s talk about how this sentence is phrased. I don’t think that these women are likely to be having difficulty finding men who *can* father their children. It’s just, you know, they have standards. I also really don’t like this because it seems like just another way to bash women who are denying their true maternal calling in their mid-twenties.
Secondly, there isn’t really much research that indicates that freezing eggs actually works or is broadly effective. The article references the birth of *two* babies that have been born using this technique. In 2002, 200,000 babies were born with the aid of assisted reproductive technologies.* Fertility clinics didn’t do it for a long time because it’s much harder to preserve eggs than it is to freeze sperm or embryos. There is some speculation about why this is, including the theory that the more robust tissue in eggs is more susceptible to damage in the freezing process, the higher water content of eggs compared to sperm (resulting in the possible formation of ice crystals which damage the cell), and so on. But moving right along…
Advances in freezing will revolutionise IVF by allowing women to store “young” eggs when they are in their twenties and thirties .
Here’s the problem. It’s still a matter of some speculation about what is a function of the age of eggs and of maternal age at the time of conception. For example: there is one theory which claims that the increased rate of birth defects in babies born to older women is caused by the age of the eggs, which have deteriorated. There’s a competing theory which suggests that there is more evolutionary pressure on older women (particularly those who are having their first baby), and so they are more likely to maintain a pregnancy that might otherwise have resulted in a miscarriage in a younger woman. Egg freezing *might* prove to be a viable (sorry, I know) reproductive technique. But it’s still far too soon to be anything approaching a revolution. And, let’s face it, we all know the real revolution in IVF will be the invention of artificial wombs. (I kid. Sort of.)
Highlights from the findings which surveyed twenty women (which is a really small sample size) in 2005.
All the women were single, with an average age of 38.6…none had a medical reason (such as impending radiation therapy) for seeking egg banking. Half of the women said they felt pressured by their biological clock and 60 per cent wanted to be sure they had taken advantage of “all possible reproductive opportunities”. Half said they saw egg freezing as an insurance policy but would probably never use the eggs. Four out of 10 said that they would be willing to become a single parent and eight out of 10 said they were either willing or unsure. Just two out of 10 ruled out the possibility of having a baby on their own.
I’m a little unclear about this “four out of ten” thing. If the sample size was 20, 40% would be eight women, but maybe this is just poor writing on the part of the newspaper? Hard to say.
Of course, these women are not representative of the population seeking egg cryopreservation anyway!
Most women who freeze their eggs do so because they have cancer and the treatment could leave them infertile, or they have ethical objections to freezing embryos.
As opposed to being women who can be characterized as selfish, unmarried career women who are being overwhelmed by their biological clocks. At the moment, it’s still a matter of speculation as to whether or not egg freezing will become a popular choice. These women are not part of a new big rush towards a novel fertility treatment.
Gillian Lockwood, director of Midland Fertility Services , said last month that women in their thirties should think about freezing their eggs. If they found themselves childless a decade on, it would greatly increase their chances of conceiving. Fertility clinics could come under increased pressure from older women who believed they had a right to have their own stored eggs fertilised and replaced in the womb decades later, she said.
First of all, “greatly increase their chances of conceiving” is damn speculative. A word of advice: never, ever trust statements of efficacy from fertility clinics. Their statistics are advertising material, and most of them go to great lengths to present the most flattering data possible. Yes, they are required to be truthful, but still. In the United States, fertility clinics are virtually unregulated, so how they define successes and failures is highly subjective. Other observers are not nearly so optimistic about the success of egg freezing:
The technology of egg freezing was still untried, the outcomes uncertain and the safety questionable, she said. “To freeze your eggs at 38 cannot give you a good outlook.
So is it going to greatly improve my chances of conceiving? Or will it do nothing? Glad to know the article has taken a definitive stand on the issue. There’s one other thing that isn’t mentioned here: the length of time the eggs will be frozen. Embryos, for example, are generally not considered viable any more after a certain length of time in the freezer (approximately 7 years, although some pregancies have resulted from embryos which have been frozen longer). If you’re a woman in your mid-twenties, it is possible that your eggs could be in the freezer for fifteen years. It’s completely unknown whether or not long-term freezing is even possible.
And of course, we couldn’t end the article without some discussion of the politics:
“These women were all graduates and they knew it was less and less likely they would find a partner quickly and press them into having children. But I feel that it is the wrong way to think about becoming a parent. It is never going to be convenient. All career people face the same problem and they need to think about it in their early thirties. Men, too, need to think about their partners…These are not young eggs. People have to be reminded that they have to make compromises between children and career. It is not only a medical problem, it is a political one.”
I love this one reference to men, because no one ever asks men if they’re freezing their sperm, waiting for Ms. Right, or even if they’re planning to make compromises between family and work. Those questions aren’t even considered material or worthy of study. I certainly know men who are in their mid to late thirties who would really like to get married and have kids, but it’s not looking so optimistic right now. Potential partners just aren’t on the radar.
But it’s women for whom family and marriage are the aspirations. Not being married until you’re in your forties (horrors!) or not having children is not a sign of the apocalypse. Not every woman fits that husband and babies model, whether by choice or circumstance. But this article presents the possibility of not being able to have children as the worst thing that could ever happen. It’s presented as these women’s sole motivation. One of the extremely toxic effects of the patriarchy is that even if you’re *not* in fact a failure for not comforming to certain cultural scripts, you’re made out to be one.
*Yes, I know this means that I am comparing one technique against all others lumped together, but I think we can all agree on the fact that two babies are still not statistically significant.