Anticipating Infertility

Abstract

This article discusses the new reproductive technology of egg freezing in the context of existing literature on gender, medicalization, and infertility. What is unique about this technology is its use by women who are not currently infertile but who may anticipate a future diagnosis. This circumstance gives rise to a new ontological category of “anticipated infertility.” The author draws on participant observation and a qualitative analysis of scientific, mainstream, and marketing literature to identify and compare the representation of two different candidates for egg freezing: women with cancer and healthy young women. Although both populations experience anticipated infertility, their dichotomous portrayals as appropriate candidates are demonstrative of gender norms linking women to motherhood. Egg freezing is a concise illustration of how the medicalization of women’s bodies and bodily processes masks a host of cultural anxieties about aging, illness, reproduction, and risk.

Social egg freezing: for better, not for worse

“…If only 40-year old women resort to social freezing in a desperate attempt to 'save' their fertility, it will hardly produce any positive results and we believe that it is this image that has sparked the narrative of social egg freezers as women vulnerable to exploitation (Martin, 2010). However, by banning social egg freezing, women who would stand to benefit from it and would not be exploited but helped by having a number of eggs in storage, will also lose out.…”

“…The latest issue to feed the traditional standoff between respecting women's autonomous decisions and (paternalistically) protecting them from exploitation is the possibility for healthy women to cryopreserve their oocytes, just in case they have no (good) oocytes left by the time they are ready to reproduce. While the option for cancer patients to freeze oocytes in the face of treatments that may render them infertile is met with enthusiasm, offering the same option to healthy women is met with a lot more suspicion and reluctance, both by practitioners and policymakers (ASRM, 2007;Jones, 2009;Martin, 2010;McCullough, 2004;Shkedi-Rafid and HashiloniDolev, 2011). First, there are a number of 'fundamental' objections: oocyte cryopreservation is still experimental, it is unnatural, it represents an unwarranted medicalization of reproduction, risks for mother and child rise as the age of the mother rises, et cetera.…”

“…They are either depicted as selfish career women (and thus undeserving of help) or as victims of a male-oriented society that neglects young mothers and of an unscrupulous fertility industry that is ready to cash in on their fear for infertility (and thus in need of protection). (Martin, 2010) But why should these women be either perpetrators or victims? Instead of casting a moral verdict, we start from the simple observation that more and more women postpone motherhood and we grant that those who consider to go through the burdensome procedure of cryopreserving oocytes, most likely have very good reasons for postponing motherhood.…”

Oocyte cryopreservation beyond cancer: tools for ethical reflection

“…Some ethics scholars argue that oocyte cryopreservation should be equally available to women facing gonadotoxic treatments and those who wish to undergo the procedure for social reasons [8,9]; others only support restoring reproductive function in cancer survivors but do not agree to extend it beyond the borders of age-dependent fertility [10]. Some suggest to drop the tag of Bsocial^and Bmedical^by calling the procedure Ba preventive oocyte cryopreservation for anticipated gamete exhaustion^ [5,11]. Secular scholars suggest that there are no morally relevant differences between the women who opt for oocyte cryopreservation because of fertility impairing disease or for social reasons such as career or the absence of a partner [8,12].…”

“…None of the above professional organizations encourage or endorse oocyte cryopreservation for use by otherwise healthy patients in order to plan their reproductive lives. Despite this, the procedure was marketed for healthy women even before the lift of its experimental label [5] and started to receive more public attention after some corporate world giants announced that they were covering oocyte cryopreservation costs for their female employees. All of the above echoes an emerging egg freezing enterprise which often advertises its services at fertility awareness events referred to as Begg freezing parties^ [6,7].…”