Egg freezing for young women: A new dawn for reproductive autonomy?

Abstract

Egg freezing has become increasingly popular in the past fifteen years. Some experts have hailed it as revolutionary and present it as an answer to young women's problem of aligning their reproductive lifespan with other goals and events in life, likening it to the contraceptive pill. Others, however, are more sceptical, seeing it more as a case of exploitation of a vulnerable group of women and medicalization of societal problems. This review critically examines the portrayed benefits of egg freezing through two lines of enquiry: whether egg freezing is a viable reproductive option (the individual level), and whether it effectively increases gender equality (the collective level), hereby also focussing on the critique that it is the wrong kind of answer, namely a medical answer to a social problem. We conclude that although egg freezing can benefit reproductive autonomy, is not the liberating reproductive revolution it is sometimes made out to be.