Podcast Review: Would You Freeze and Share Your Eggs?

While headlines have focused on the growing demand for egg freezing among women during and following the pandemic, there has been little focus on the cost of this procedure.

It is this issue and the potential solution offered by egg-freeze-and-share programmes that journalist Anna Louise Sussman attempted to broach in an article, and podcast for The Cut. Egg-freeze-and-share programmes involve women giving away a portion of their eggs to potential recipients and freezing the rest for their own use in later life, when they are ready to become parents.

Before listening to this episode, my knowledge of egg freezing was limited. I had not considered it for myself, but I now know that it may not be an option for me due to how costly the process is. Presenter BA Parker starts by discussing the issue with Sussman and explains that the cost for the procedure can be as high as US$30,000 in the USA.

Considering the astronomical costs associated with egg freezing, egg-freeze-and-share programmes promise to increase accessibility to egg freezing for women who otherwise could not afford to do so. Women taking part in these programmes keep half of their eggs for freezing and give half away. The benefit of this, explained Sussman, is the recipient of half of the donor's eggs picks up the cost for everything.

From this introduction, the episode delves into the logistics of egg-freeze-and-share programmes with an interview by Sussman of Dr Aimee Eyvazzadeh, who runs a clinic known for its egg freeze-and-share programme, where patients taking part in this programme are entitled to five years free storage of their eggs. 'You're going to run out of eggs. Every single woman does. And sometimes they run out before they're done having kids,' explained Dr Eyvazzadeh in the podcast. 'When I started my practice, the average age of first-time birth in the Bay Area was around 31 or 32. It's continuing to creep up, where I'm seeing more and more patients who are 50-54 now than ever before.' The average age of potential first-time parents at her clinic is now around 41-44, she added.

The above statement by Dr Eyvazzadeh stuck with me, but I felt it also reflected the change in circumstances of women of today’s society. There seems to be an increasing trend of women delaying parenthood in pursuit of education and career across all social classes as reported by a New York Times article, titled 'Why American Women Everywhere Are Delaying Motherhood'. I think this also speaks to how parenthood requires more investment from women than men, and therefore why women may be approaching having children with a plan in mind.

So, what exactly does this programme involve? Women must undergo hormone stimulation to produce mature eggs in one given menstrual cycle. It is hoped 15-20 eggs can be harvested in one go during egg retrieval. Of these eggs, half will be given to the donor, while the other half will be for the recipient.

While the purpose of egg-freeze-and-share programmes is to increase the accessibility of egg freezing for women across varying socio-economic backgrounds, these patients are ultimately at the whim of the recipients. They will only be able to donate if a potential recipient considers their genetic material to be desirable. If the recipient does not want to use their eggs, the donor is unable to use this programme, and the procedure may remain unaffordable and inaccessible to them.

From this point, the episode shifts into discussing the ethics surrounding egg-freeze-and-share programmes, which I found to be the most interesting part of this episode. The focus was put upon how donors feel about their donated eggs potentially leading to children that will share half of their genetic material.

To address this point, Parker interviewed two donors who have used egg freeze-and-share programmes to understand their perspective on the eggs they have donated.

Hearing these perspectives was interesting, especially that donors were not just at the will of the recipients. Egg-freeze-and-share programmes involve a meeting of donors and recipients. This ensures that a relationship is established that both parties are satisfied with. Donors also can decide to be anonymous or not and choose whether to find out if any children result from their donated eggs.

I think it would have been interesting to also get the perspective from the recipients of eggs. It would have been interesting to know how many women using these programmes have successfully used their eggs to become parents. Particularly considering women would need to undergo IVF to use their eggs, which is a costly process, alongside storage fees.

I found this to be quite an interesting topic and the podcast explains clearly how egg-freeze-and-share programmes work and the potential ethics surrounding them. Hearing from different perspectives including practitioners who are offering these programmes, and women who have used them adds further to the discourse on the subject.