Some employers are paying for egg freezing. Is it about helping you have a family or something else?

Toronto lawyer Salima Fakirani was 31 when she decided to freeze her eggs. She had been considering it for a few years, and even went to a fertility clinic for counseling. But when her employer offered an egg-freezing benefit, she decided to take it.

She did two rounds of egg freezing and had “a good number” of her eggs in storage.

“I felt like I bought myself a little bit of time,” he said. “I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.” She used to joke with her mother that she had grandchildren in a freezer somewhere, so she didn’t have to worry anymore.

Fakirani first heard about egg freezing from female colleagues at a large Toronto law firm. The idea is that you take eggs out of your ovaries when you’re young and keep them on ice until you need them, reducing the risk that you won’t be able to have children when you’re finally ready.

egg party business

Some people see egg freezing as a way for women to take control of their fertility. However, other experts caution that the fertility industry is merely profiting from the tension that women feel between career building and family building.

Egg cells are difficult to freeze and thaw without damage. A technology called “vitrification” did not come on the scene until the early 2000s.

In 2012, egg freezing was no longer considered “experimental” – and it took off.

The fertility clinic wanted every young woman to know about it. She hosted “egg freezing parties” where young women could drink cocktails and learn about their dwindling egg supplies. They offered free fertility testing. They had attractive advertisements.

By 2014, some large tech companies offered egg freezing benefits as part of their employment packages. She believed this would help attract and retain female talent. And many women were interested.

But others felt uneasy.

“When you say your company will pay for egg freezing what effect does that actually have on women?” asks Lucy van de Wiel, senior lecturer in global health and social medicine at King’s College London in the UK and author of the book freezing fertility,

Some people think it actually discourages reproduction, says Van de Wiel: Why have a family now when your employer is paying you to put it off until later?

Unsure about paternity? buy more time

Van de Wiel is interested in the business side of fertility. She says egg freezing offers a huge growth opportunity for the industry. In places where fertility treatment is not covered by public health care plans, clinics are being taken over by private equity. And for private equity, she says, growth is king.

“To have good revenue, it is not enough to make good profits,” she says, “you have to show that your number of patients treated and revenue are growing year over year.” And that’s where egg freezing comes in, because egg freezing is growing very rapidly.

According to data from the Canadian Assisted Reproductive Technologies Register, in 2013, only 94 Canadians froze their eggs electively, but in 2024, that number will be 1,919. In America in 2023, More than 39,000 people froze their eggs alternatively,

Unlike treatments like in vitro fertilization (IVF), which are for infertile people who want to conceive immediately, egg freezing services are for any woman who wants to have children in the future. He doesn’t need to know that she wants kids – he just needs to wonder if she wants to. That’s a lot of potential customers.

Many people believe that women are freezing their eggs so that they can give up motherhood and pursue a career. But Marcia Inhorn, an anthropologist at Yale University who Interviewed 150 American women who had frozen their eggs for his book Motherhood on Ice: The Difference Between Orgasms and Why Women Freeze Their EggsFound otherwise.

The most common reason, she says, was that educated women were having trouble finding men interested in having families with them. Inhorn says women freeze their eggs so they can have more time while looking at them.

Many people believe that women are freezing their eggs so that they can give up motherhood and pursue a career. But Marcia Inhorn, an anthropologist at Yale University who Interviewed 150 American women who had frozen their eggs for his book Motherhood on Ice: The Difference Between Orgasms and Why Women Freeze Their EggsFound otherwise.

The most common reason, she says, was that educated women were having trouble finding men interested in having families with them. Inhorn says women freeze their eggs so they can have more time while looking at them.

ignorant of important information

Katie Hammond is a law professor at Toronto Metropolitan University who specializes in issues related to assisted reproductive technologies. Consent documents from Canadian clinics studiedShe has found that people who freeze their eggs are not always properly informed by clinics about the risks, costs, or harms of using those frozen eggs to have a child.

Hammond says he has conflicting feelings about the practice. “The optimist in me thinks that elective egg freezing is, to some extent, about reproductive autonomy and giving people the ability to be able to postpone having children if they are not in a situation where they are able or want to have children at the present time.

“I think it also gives people who aren’t sure whether they want to have kids a little more leeway to think about this decision.”

Pessimistically, she says, she sees it as a business only for profit.

“Employers who offer benefits for this tend to do so in workplace cultures that try to get people to work as many hours as possible while they are young.”

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