How Egg Freezing & IVF Clinics Are Putting Women At Risk
By Vicky Spratt,
Refinery29
| 11. 22. 2021
There is increasing concern among the medical community that the high doses of hormones involved in fertility treatments – whether that is for IVF or egg freezing – are putting women unnecessarily at risk of complications.
In September 2020 Francesa Hockham had a miscarriage. She was shocked when it happened and so was her husband because they didn’t know they could get pregnant naturally. The first they knew of the pregnancy was when they lost it. Francesca, a charity support worker from Milton Keynes, is now 40. She had been going through IVF since she was 35 after getting pregnant naturally proved to be a challenge.
In total, Francesca has undergone two rounds of IVF. During that process she has had 26 eggs extracted, 10 of which were fertilised and seven of which made it to the embryo stage. It has been a physically and emotionally draining process which has taken a toll on her body and mind.
This, in no small part, seems to be because she has polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and endometriosis. The former she discovered while taking...
Related Articles
By Ryan Cross, Endpoints News | 08.19.2025
Human eggs are incredibly rare cells. The ovary typically produces only 400 mature eggs across a woman’s life. But biologists in George Church’s lab at Harvard University — a group that’s never content with nature’s limits — just got a...
By Riley Beggin and Jeff Stein, The Washington Post | 08.03.2025
The White House does not plan to require health insurers to provide coverage for in vitro fertilization services, two people with knowledge of internal discussions said, even though the idea was one of President Donald Trump’s key campaign pledges.
Last...
By Harry Hunter, PET BioNews | 08.11.2025
The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology has announced plans to publish a POSTnote and called for submissions on surrogacy law in the UK and internationally.
The current UK surrogacy laws, largely based on legislation from the 1980s, have been...
By Staff, National Women's Law Center | 08.13.2025
INTRODUCTION
Baby bonuses. Motherhood medals. Fertility tracking. You may have heard of these policy proposals as solutions from the Trump administration to help encourage women to have more children.
Besides falling short of ensuring that people have what they need...
