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Discussing egg freezing
egg freezing
Paying for egg freezing, I guess, it depends on the reasons why you are doing it. If it is for career purposes then that’s, in my opinion, you know, that’s more an individual kind of responsibility but if you are both jointly kind of choosing that then you should both also share the cost. that’s interesting. So, I guess, if you are single and you are planning like this you will be taking that burden on yourself, which I think makes it a lot more, difficult decision to come to when you are struggling financially from that point, if you are not quite ready financially but that is when your egg’s are most ready so, it is a shame.
I mean just taking us now, like, it is so hard as a 24 year old to even think about, you know, getting a house and paying rent and just living let alone planning 10 years into the future and investing what, six or seven thousand pounds into freezing my eggs, which I may or may not use. And I don’t think many people our age would necessarily have that kind of money. Yeah, exactly. Hanging around to, to pay for egg freezing.
But if you really felt as though that would be, you know, one of the main things that you would want to do when you get older you would figure out a way somehow, just the same way as if you were 35 and you wanted to have a child, you would figure it out. Should you invest that much in something that’s really not a guarantee? I think from my kind of background, I feel as though, because I’m first generation Western, If I was to go home and say to my parents, “actually, I am going to freeze my eggs.”
I think they would be absolutely horrified at just the idea of me doing that rather than finding a husband and getting married and then having children the traditional way. I think for them that would be really disappointing. And I would then lose my support network. And actually I wouldn’t want to go through that procedure and then have that in the back of my mind because actually you want to have a child, because you want that supportive network. And would you want to lose one supportive network to get another? Now see my family would probably be the opposite and be very liberal and, you know, you do whatever you do best. And we will sort of help you out.
Like my parents have always very supportive with everything, so I think you right. I think there is definitely a cultural difference, towards it. I think talking about who is profiting from this market, this fertility market is really interesting? And so apps getting involved in almost like fertility dating Apps, but also companies that will pay for their female employees to freeze their eggs And I think there is a very fine line here between ‘yes, that is great and what you’re doing is awful?’ I think it is the way that you kind of advertise it as well.
If it is an incentive to kind of, higher more women for the company where it might be kind of male dominated then great, but if it is just a way to make sure that the women stay on for longer or that you are losing less money as a company then, you know, where do you draw the line? I think we think that everything is really well regulated but one thing that has become so clear in our masters is that the whole industry of IVF is totally unregulated I would say.
I was really quite shocked by what that actually meant, so you know fertility clinics will go by their success rates and their, like, pregnancy rates but success rate should be on the amount of, like, singleton pregnancies that are occurring as a result of IVF. And there are certain guidelines that you have to or are recommended for you to follow but they are not set in stone. And a lot of IVF clinics will put in more than one embryo even when it is not needed, so your amount of like twin and like multiple pregnancies is increasing so much more and this is a huge burden on mum and the babies and like the NHS for us.
And I just think that all of these facts aren’t really told to mum. And I think there is also a sense of like ownership, like, when you are paying for something that you can demand what you want as well. And I think the boundaries of, like, what the doctor’s responsibility is and what the patient should accept are kind of hazed in that platform as well. One thing I am wondering is that in a company offering egg freezing to their employees whether or not, a woman decided to go for it or not is it concealed to the, to the yes, to basically to the company or not?
Because I mean, like, if you picture the scenario, two women applying for promotion are they going to be able to see which one took the egg freezing or not, is it like? ‘Oh so I am guessing she is more career driven than this one. Maybe she wants it more. I mean, and this one she is going to like drop us in 5 years, she is going to get pregnant and we are never going to see her again.’ What about if you leave the company? Like, you take a job at a different company, do they have any ownership over what they’ve paid for? Equally you can choose to work at a company for their policy of egg freezing.
How long do you have to work there before they give you that perk? Exactly. The other thing I think to consider is would these companies actually be better off paying childcare? You know, yes, go and have a baby now if you ready to go and have a baby and pay for healthcare. Would that actually be more beneficial to our society? Maybe like have nurseries in the companies, a lot of stuff like that really helps. Yeah that could be a lot more beneficial long term.
Join us as we listen in on a discussion between a group of MSc students at UCL’s Institute for Women’s Health. They have been asked to discuss the pros and cons of egg freezing from their point of view.
The students raise a number of questions with regard to egg freezing – Who should pay for egg freezing? How do different families respond? Should companies be funding egg freezing, and if so, what might the effect be on an employee’s prospects? What alternatives would there be?
The views on this topic are highly personal and, to a large extent, influenced by a person background and values. This discussion brings out how individual the choices around reproduction can be, and also who technology is changing the range of options for many young people today.
For discussion: What do you think? Is social egg freezing a technology that increases the range of reproductive choices available to women (and, by extension, men). Please share your own perspective as part of this discussion.
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