More Women Are Freezing Their Eggs, But Will They Ever Use Them

If egg freezing once sounded like science fiction, those days are over. Women now hear about it from their friends, their doctors and informational events like Wine and Freeze.

Shady Grove Fertility Center in the Washington, D.C., area hosts Wine and Freeze nights for prospective patients every few months. Fifteen or so women in their 30s gathered at one recently over wine, brownies and sticky buns. A doctor explained the procedure, the costs and the odds of frozen eggs resulting in a baby — which decline as a woman ages.

Egg freezing for medical reasons — often women undergoing chemotherapy — has been possible for decades. Some 5,000 babies have been born from eggs that were frozen, thawed and fertilized.

In 2012, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine decided egg freezing was no longer an experimental procedure. That opened the door for clinics like Shady Grove to market it to women who don't have a medical reason to do it but are simply worried about their declining fertility — what's being dubbed as "social" egg freezing.

The "social" egg freezing...