Women are being sold a dangerous binary discourse regarding their fertility…

I recently read that 60% of child-free women feel like their time is running out and feel pressure to become pregnant ‘because of the pandemic’. As someone who had never been bothered about my own biological clock, I was surprised at myself when I too began to feel drawn in by the fertility-centric rhetoric that seemed to be coming at me from all angles.

During the pandemic I began to feel like I should freeze my eggs. I’ve never been too bothered about having kids. Sure, it might be nice but I’ve never lost sleep over it. Suddenly I was feeling like I needed to make this crucial decision, researching egg freezing processes and setting up savings accounts for the procedures.

Egg freezing is invasive and painful – like most procedures for women – and has a fairly low success rate. Despite this, egg freezing procedures have increased five fold in recent years. Marketing for clinics has boomed and egg freezing for what’s known as ‘social reasons’ is being presented to single women in their twenties and thirties in a ‘quick fix’ manner that doesn’t feel particularly empowering or focused on personal choice. ‘Social reasons’ include being single at the time of having your eggs frozen and wanting more time to decide whether to have children. There are no provisions on the NHS to have your eggs frozen for social reasons, you’ll have to go private for ‘non medical’ or ‘elective’ freezing.

Research shows that fertility patients are now planning to opt for faster and more aggressive private treatments in the wake of the pandemic, putting their health at risk. What’s more, clinics are now offering direct payment models that incentivise profit over health.

For context, the average cost of having eggs collected and frozen is £3,350, with medication being an added £500-£1,500. Storage costs are extra and tend to be between £125 and £350 per year. Thawing eggs and transferring them to the womb costs an average of £2,500. So, the whole process for egg freezing and thawing costs an average of £7,000-£8,000.

As someone in the firing line for this kind of marketing, I saw first hand how freezing was being presented as a one and done solution when in fact, putting your eggs on ice doesn’t mean you’ll be more likely to have a baby, or that you’ll necessarily extend your chances.

What I’ve learnt over the past two years is that being aware of your ovarian health and taking ovarian reserve tests, which are not invasive or painful, is a much better way of staying abreast of your fertility and general health. Ultimately, the older we get, the more difficult it is to conceive. That’s a fact and means that to some extent, having kids is down to the roll of the dice. We can’t control everything and the egg freezing marketing really exploits our fears over this. It doesn’t really offer a solution. It just takes our anxiety and runs with it.

We know that embryo freezing offers a greater success rate than egg freezing and that in order to freeze embryos you’ll need two significant resources – money and healthy sperm. We also know that many people who put eggs and embryos on ice are doing so because they’re not yet ready to have children but hope to be at a later date. Or they do so because they’re having issues with their ability to carry a child to term. This isn’t the case for me, nor is it the case for many women in their late twenties and early thirties who are being targeted by egg freezing ads.

Yes, our ovarian reserve will deplete as we grow older and there is such a thing as a biological clock. However, targeting young women with egg freezing ads without any other context is unethical. I am not someone who needs to freeze her eggs but for a while, I was convinced that this was something I should do. The binary discourse of ‘whip them out and freeze them or lose them’ is a dangerous one. It fails to instruct women on the importance of ovarian care and body literacy, of living healthily for your own hormonal wellbeing and on trying when you’re ready.

The likelihood that frozen eggs survive the thawing process is 70 – 80% but this decreases after the age of 35. Older eggs are less likely to survive the process. The younger you are when you freeze your eggs, the better, but the UK also has a ten year freezing limit on eggs. If you have only ten years to use them, are you really buying time? Is it worth having your eggs harvested? Especially when the cost is so high?

Yes, freezing your eggs can be an empowering move but it isn’t always, particularly if you’re in the demographic of single women that’s been targeted so intensely throughout the pandemic. Freezing doesn’t guarantee a healthy embryo or a successful pregnancy when the time comes. When faced with aggressive marketing that offers a quick fix or a ‘fertility hack’, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

The best way to buy time is to become fertility literate sooner. To learn what we’re not taught in school about our bodies. With so little research dedicated to women’s fertility this is a challenge at the best of times, but knowing what to look for and how to maintain good ovarian health is a start.