Social Egg Freezing in the Race Against the Biological Clock

Elective or ‘social’ egg freezing is a relatively new option available to younger women who are not yet ready to conceive but wish to increase their chances later in life. In 2012, two important professional societies published clinical recommendations regarding this emerging technique. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine suggested it should no longer be considered experimental, but did not endorse its routine elective use, while the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology did not find convincing arguments against its elective use. These recommendations received much media attention, making elective egg freezing a hotly debated social issue.

Egg freezing is a technique that allows long-term storage of eggs in sub-zero temperatures. Although no reliable data are available, it is believed that to date thousands of babies have been born worldwide from previously frozen eggs. This technique is used in infertility treatment when more eggs are retrieved than needed or as a means of medical fertility preservation. In elective egg freezing, this technique is used by healthy and fertile women and may be described as ‘self-egg-donation’...