Texas born and raised successful entrepreneur Carol Chen has built a life and several fashion businesses in Singapore.
She always dreamed of becoming a mother. But there was a catch. Having your designs presented at Paris Fashion Week is no problem. Finding a life partner – much more difficult.
When she was in her mid-thirties, she began to worry.
“I’ve just started reading a ton of material online that says your body really does become a lot less fertile after 35. I was starting to freak out,” she says.
She was single, so she decided it was time to freeze her eggs – a method of fertility preservation so she could potentially try to have children at a later date.
It’s a relatively new procedure and success rates vary significantly depending on how many eggs the woman is freezing and how old she is at the time.
A 2016 study of 1,171 in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles using frozen eggs found that women who had five frozen eggs aged 35 or younger had a 15% chance of having a live birth. While this probability has increased to 61% in women who have frozen 10 eggs and 85% in women who have frozen 15 or more eggs.
While a recent study found that 70% of women who froze eggs when they were under 38 and thawed at least 20 eggs at a later date had a baby.
When weighing these data, it is worth considering that the birth rate for IVF itself is low; just 24% per embryo transferred, according to the UK Human Fertilization and Embryology Agency.
Despite these odds, egg freezing could become more popular. For example, in the US, 10,936 women froze their eggs in 2017 — or 23 times the number in 2009, but that feels like old numbers.
Singapore is the latest country to lift the ban on egg freezing for non-medical reasons – this will come into effect from January 2023.
In the UK, egg freezing is not normally covered by the NHS unless you have a condition that affects your fertility e.g. B. certain cancers or lupus. Although the UK government recently announced a 10-year limit on storing frozen eggs, sperm and embryos are being scrapped.
There is no question that the procedure is quite a financial undertaking. Carol spent almost $14,000 (£11,400) on a round of egg freezing and had to travel across the US to do it. She didn’t have as many balls as she wanted, which made her feel “less like a woman,” she says.
She is overjoyed for Singapore women and hopes many more Asian countries will follow.
“Even in the US, being a second-generation immigrant can be taboo for an Asian woman,” she says.
In the end, Carol got lucky. She never had to worry about paying for another round of egg freezing. She met her now husband two years ago and managed to conceive naturally in her 40s.
In fact, the percentage of women who actually use their frozen eggs remains very low, under 10%.
Another mini-study analyzed data from London’s two largest fertility clinics; In that ten-year period, 2008-2017, only about a fifth of the patients who had their eggs frozen at the clinic returned to use them.
But that trend hasn’t stopped some employers from including it in an ever-expanding portfolio of fertility benefits.
The trend unsurprisingly began in Silicon Valley in 2014, when Facebook and Apple began offering their employees egg freezing as part of their benefits package.
Eight years later, large corporations are struggling to recruit and retain workers, so various fertility benefits have gone from novelty to must-haves. Almost 40% of large companies in the US, i.e. those with more than 500 employees, offer them.
Even in Europe, with its much more generous, government-funded healthcare services, some companies are starting to follow suit, such as social media marketing firm Hootsuite.
In the UK, companies such as banking group NatWest and energy company Centrica are offering up to £45,000 per employee for appropriate treatment or service.
Jenny Saft is co-founder of a technology platform that offers fertility benefits and works with employers across Europe. She says the picture is complex and there are many restrictions and restrictions on access to government-funded fertility treatments – so companies are increasingly stepping in.
In Germany, for example, health insurance covers half the cost of up to three IVF cycles, but only if you’re married, in a heterosexual relationship, and a woman under 40, she says.
But not everyone thinks that involving a company or boss directly in your fertility is good news.
dr Lucy Van De Wiel is Lecturer in Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. She calls this employment policy a “PR technology” that is successful in “attracting and retaining female employees and is thus sold by the insurance companies to the employers”.
dr Van De Wiel is concerned that the insurer plays a central role in how people approach their reproductive decisions, which could lead to over-commercialization of fertility.
She acknowledges that while it’s great for women to have more information about their fertility, she worries that this education could come from companies that could benefit financially from people using these technologies. “It’s very difficult to avoid conflicts of interest.”
This is a particular concern when it comes to egg freezing because, unlike IVF, almost all women under a certain age could be treated as potential clients. Any woman who wants to have a child in the future could be a candidate for egg freezing.
dr Van De Wiel says there are studies that show women who are offered these services are quite happy to have options, but also feel like their employer is telling them they need to take the time to make up their minds to have children.
New York-based entertainment attorney Nyasha Foy is aware of the potential conflict of interest here.
Her company offered to pay for two rounds of egg freezing and storage, and she accepted the benefit.
“I absolutely see this idea that if I give you $10,000 to freeze eggs, the return on your investment if you work at this company for another year or two is a win,” she says. “There’s a feeling of that kind of energy and you feel a little weird about it, don’t you?”
However, Ms Foy believes women can change the dynamic and do it for themselves.
“I didn’t meet my husband in college, didn’t meet my husband in law school,” she explains, “so there’s this feeling in the back of your mind that you have to hurry up and just have a kid. I’m fine with the commodification of that, especially in America as we need to revisit Roe v Wade. To be able to say as a woman I choose to just wait a little bit longer. This choice isn’t just about body autonomy, that is life autonomy,” she concludes.
There is no denying that egg freezing is only gaining traction in the developed world, and fertility clinics are struggling to attract clients by any means necessary.
Fertility doctor Aimee Eyvazzadeh, also known as the “egg whisperer,” lives in California and is known for throwing egg-freezing parties at “fancy restaurants with nice bars and delicious food.”
She concedes that it is worrying that the freeze is being referred to as a means of “taking control” or an insurance policy. “You may have given yourself a chance for the future, but the chance may not have been as great as you once thought,” she adds.
The average patient of Dr. Eyvazzadeh is 39 years old. She thinks that could increase to 49 in 15 years. That’s why she believes young women who don’t have fertility issues should definitely consider freezing their eggs “for their 40-year-old selves.”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the US, Nyasha Foy ponders her next moves. She hasn’t used her frozen eggs yet and is still hoping to meet her “baby daddy” first,
“I’m 37 now. If I get to a place where I can’t carry a baby, I’m in a position where I could potentially get a surrogate,” she says.
“I want to be a mother. I know I’ll make it I don’t know how or when, but I did what I can to give myself the best chances.”
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