More Women Are Freezing Their Eggs and Here Is Why It Matters

It’s high time pro-lifers realized that women’s reproductive autonomy is non-negotiable.

If you have been following my posts, by now you should know I’m NO pro-lifer and I’m certainly not anti-monogamy either. However, if a decision is for world peace, then we can talk about compromising.

Claire and I have been friends since college. My girl has made a lot of millions from marrying and divorcing her husbands. Lucky girl?

Not so much.

Claire is on her sixth marriage if my counting is correct. She is thirty-eight years old with a son and she’s considering freezing her eggs till infinity.

While we talking about her decision to go egg freezing just like most women are doing, she was having second thoughts and wanted to know my opinion on that matter.

She said she had discussed this matter with her partner — who she has no intention of marrying, by the way, and he forbids her from doing that.

Claire doesn’t want to have another child sometime soon, but she’s not ready to lose her new honey trap. Knowing my friend as well as I do, her life is conflicting so I reserved my comment. I told her she should do what’s best for her.

Some women don’t want to hear honest opinions when they seek your advice. They just want confirmation to ‘hate you’ or ‘love you’ and I wasn’t going to give Claire that satisfaction.

Many women are confused about what to do when it comes to motherhood. Like, Monyetta Shaw, singer Ne-yo’s ex-fiancé.

Shaw thought she was doing the best thing to keep her man when she decided to tie her fallopian tubes PERMANENTLY after her second baby.

Unfortunately, before she could get her happily ever after, Ne-yo got another woman pregnant, married the woman and dumped her.

Was her decision to take out her womb the reason for the breakup?

Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The deed has been done and she lost. Now Shaw warns other women to never make the same mistake she did.

We shouldn’t be surprised women are choosing to freeze their eggs instead of permanently removing their ovaries.

Not too long ago, some fanatics decided to remove women’s right to make reproductive choices that suits them.

But women are not dummies. You don’t expect us to sit with our hands folded and accept whatever silly laws you impose on us.

Men have it easier in relationships.

They get to choose when to marry, and when to become fathers. And when they are not ready, they become deadbeat dads. One writer here actually bragged about it. He said being a deadbeat father was the best decision he has ever made in his life. You can imagine that!

You see men have an escape hatch if sex goes wrong. But the women have no escape hatch. Once an egg is hatched, she carries the baby through pain and sacrifices her life for her child.

Although it’s a well-deserving honor to bring another human being into this world, however, that decision should be a choice made after due preparation. Being a mother is not peanuts and cookies. You need to be mentally and financially prepared to go through that journey.

But since some insecure men, can’t tolerate women having the power to decide when is the best time for them to be mothers and when it’s not, they took away that power. A woman’s body autonomy is not just her human right, it’s also her safety net when she’s not ready to sacrifice more than she bargained for.

Now ‘motherhood on ice’ is the new trend. Women are freezing their eggs or staying child-free for life. Can they tell us what’s worse- having an abortion or not getting pregnant at all?

Well, not getting pregnant is a woman’s best option and we are not leaving any loose ends. It’s time crazy fanatics realize that 21st-century women are not like their mothers, who didn’t know their rights and the powers they possess and would rather cower behind their men.

Like it or not, women have more power than men when it comes to influencing cultural changes and development. Have you already forgotten what happened in the 1940s?

Men were out on war fronts while women tended to consumer production. In that time, the GDP of most countries grew by 98 per cent compared to when men were in the workforce.

Women actually produced a more efficient and effective workforce than men. No wonder some companies are banking on the egg-freezing option for their female employees.

Despite the high cost of freezing eggs, the rate of women adopting the procedure rises every year.

Egg freezing grew popular after the American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) removed the “experimental” label from the procedure in 2012.

Many women with medical conditions like undertaking chemotherapy opted to freeze their eggs because of the side effects from the treatment and conditions like endometriosis that reduce fertility chances.

In 2020 during COVID, the rate of egg freezing skyrocket by 400 per cent from the previous 25% in 2019. Some women who wanted to freeze their eggs but couldn’t afford it due to the nature of their job like airplane hostesses decided to freeze their eggs at home to avoid the risk of getting infected in the clinic.

Social egg freezing became famous as more and more women opted to freeze their eggs because they can afford to.

Recent studies have discovered that the rate of egg freezing is growing steadily at 40 per cent annually and some companies offering high cost for the procedure are considering reducing the cost of egg freezing by introducing low-affordable plans.

Especially, now that some companies are including egg freezing as a benefits package for female workers with a uterus. And come to think of it. It’s a win-win bargain for the employees and the company.

Women get to freeze their eggs at a reduced cost while the company get women working longer without taking maternity leaves or dealing with pregnancy issues. And more work hours means more money for the workers and the company.

One doctor at the Shady Grove clinic in Atlanta describes the rapidly growing rate of social egg freezing as “the boom period before a bust,” which proves that the growth is only at the early stage.

Women have always felt pressured by their biological clock, but the procedure of freezing eggs gives women more options to delay childbirth and focus on their careers, have a life and prepare themselves for motherhood.

For child-free women by choice, some are willing to compromise their decision if they find the right partner deserving of that sacrifice. So by freezing their eggs, they are not giving up their freedom.

And when they meet the right person, they have four or five years to spend with them before getting pregnant to be sure their partner is ready to become a family man.

Why men should be worried about the rising rate of ‘social egg freezing’

Most women struggle to balance both career and family. For new moms, you spend all day at work and return to nurse your child with the stress. The anxiety most women go through to keep up with the social pressures of being ‘the perfect mothers’ can be overwhelming.

This is why encouraging women to have children later in life is a welcome relief. But it has some disadvantages too. Having children in old age has its risk for both men and women. And whether we freeze our eggs or not, the risk of late pregnancy at an older age — say 60 and above — is still there.

However, aside from medical risks, egg freezing has social consequences that can leave men out of the procreation cycle. What egg freezing means to men is more worrisome because women are completely cutting them off from the decision-making process.

This means men are forced to have children late whether they like it or not. If more women are opting to freeze their eggs, men have no say in the matter, which means the decision to have children at an older age has already been decided even before you met the woman.

For men who want to get married and have children as early as 28 years, that dream will be shattered if the woman has already frozen her eggs before you met her.

And for men with erectile dysfunction, which 56 per cent of men have, well, that leaves them with a 10% chance of ever being fathers. Because 35% of women have already frozen their eggs before they hit thirty-five.

Let’s not forget that raising children in old age is more challenging than it seems. Men have had it easier being dads at 50 because they marry younger women, strong enough to take off the burden from them.

But if both you and the woman are raising your children when your energy is diminishing, you will realize the challenges of raising a child at an older age is real.

Another troubling concern men should be aware of is that most women who freeze their eggs for social reasons — such as buying time to find the right partner — often pursue single motherhood when they can’t find a desirable partner as they approach their forties. This means more men will not have the opportunity to be fathers.

Egg freezing is a great opportunity for women to trash the age discrimination around the reproductive cycle. In some countries, eggs can be frozen for ten years. But for medical reasons, you can expect the time to be longer than fifty years.

The stereotype that women’s reproductive age is a ticking time bomb has been destigmatized by the discovery of egg-freezing technology. In other words, women are no longer under pressure to accept irresponsible men as their partners.

So it’s time men started putting on their best behavior if they actually want to be fathers in the near future. For all the ‘wanna be young fathers’ out there, now will be the time to get educated and learn to be a better partner if you want to keep your stakes high.

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