No, Companies Shouldn’t Pay Women to Freeze Their Eggs
By Mary Ann Mason and Tom Ekman,
Wired [cites CGS' Marcy Darnovsky]
| 04. 11. 2017
While sperm has been successfully frozen for decades, it wasn’t until 1999, when flash-freezing procedures were introduced, that eggs could also be stored in cryobanks. By 2012, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine had announced that the freezing of a woman’s own eggs for possible use later in life—otherwise known as “social freezing”—would no longer be considered experimental.
The Society’s approval was meant to apply to infertile mothers who could not produce their own healthy ova—not career women deferring their childrearing years. This point was clarified by Eric Widra, a physician and co-chair of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine committee that made the recommendation, in a 2012 PBS interview: “We think it’s premature to recommend that women freeze their eggs to preserve their own fertility for later. But we recognize that there is a strong impetus to do so and if centers proceed with that service that we carefully counsel the patients as to the pros and cons. So we would love to say, yes, please go and do this. But it comes with both personal and societal and...
Related Articles
By Editorial Staff, The Lancet | 07.20.2024
Image by DrKontogianniIVF from Wikimedia Commons
Despite major advances in securing sexual and reproductive rights globally, one aspect is continually neglected: infertility. Evolving gender norms and financial precariousness have led to delayed childbearing, which increases infertility in both males and...
By Staff, AP-NORC | 07.12.2024
Image by Dr. Jayesh Amin from Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC by-SA 3.0
Most adults support protecting access to in vitro fertilization, or IVF, a type of fertility treatment where eggs are combined with sperm outside the body in a...
By Julia Black and Margaux MacColl, The Information [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 07.19.2024
When venture capitalist Jack Abraham first began dating his wife, Gabriella Massamillo, he insisted on one condition: that when they were ready to have children, she’d be willing to conceive using in vitro fertilization. Abraham had lost both his mother...
By Eva Roytburg, Fortune | 07.11.2024