It’s not (just)that your partner is a jerk, and didn’t start the laundry last night, or your kids dawdles horribly about getting his coat on to get to school, or that your mother fell again but is being ridiculously stubborn about even thinking about moving, it’s that these little things have become impossible stress storms because only a very few of us any longer have the time or resources to do reproductive labor - Laura Briggs, “How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics”, p 10
Read Part I about the feminist politics of egg donation here.
Now, in my mid-30s I would be considered far too old to be a donor, but I am a ripe target for egg freezing campaigns. The highly educated, white American woman who is still single and “married” to her career. The woman who attended college during peak girlboss era and should have worshipped on the altar of Lean In and the rising tech industry and the glossy social media influencers out there. But I have no desire to freeze my eggs.
After egg freezing was no longer classified as an “experimental” procedure in 2012, “experts” predicted that egg freezing would usher in a new era of gender equality and career advancement for women. Arriving in peak girlboss era (mid 2010s), the procedures was marketed with a so-called “millennial-pink, girlboss sheen.”
A 2014 Bloomberg Businessweek cover story even touted: “Freeze Your Eggs, Free Your Career”, seemingly denying years of sexism in the workplace and reproductive politics in the U.S.
But reality failed to meet the hype
Egg freezing is not guarantee of ever delivering a healthy child. Indeed, egg freezing is an arduous process that includes 10–14 days of self-hormone injections. This can include up to three shots per day, to stimulate the ovaries to produce eggs. The patient also has to receive regular ultrasounds and bloodwork. Side effects of egg freezing include headaches, hot flashes, nausea, pain (we all know how the medical establishment dismisses women’s pain), cramping, and in severe cases ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome that can result in life-threatening complications like blood clots.
Egg freezing, which is not covered by most insurances in the US, disproportionally favors wealthier women who can afford the $10,000 to $15,000 cost per cycle (plus storage fees). This results in racial disparities —most women freezing their eggs are white women. This can be considered a modern form of eugenics, in which women with certain characteristics are encouraged or forced to reproduce as a means to shape population demographics.
These socioeconomic disparities are not even removed in the face of cancer. Though egg freezing was purportedly developed to help women with cancer to preserve their fertility before treatments like chemotherapy, there are serious gaps in fertility counseling for female cancer patients, especially for women with a high school education or less, public health insurance, or no health insurance. Despite recommendations for universal counselling in the US, it is estimated that only 50% to 62% of American women of childbearing age actually receive documented fertility preservation counseling before initiating cancer treatment. This may be because women with cancer diagnoses and who choose egg freezing may experience delays in receiving treatment, and the clinical outcomes of this delay are unclear. However, it’s clear that certain demographics of women are being targeted for egg preservation even when facing life-threatening cancer diagnoses.
And even if egg freezing were a 100% guarantee of a live birth, there’s still the burden of caretaking, which disproportionally falls on the woman. This might shock my non-US readers, but maternity leave (covered under the Family and Medical Leave Act-FMLA) is skimpy (only 12 weeks) and unpaid. There are also many exceptions that can undermine this—if you’ve been employed less than a year, or work part time or work as an independent contractor.
When it comes to childcare, there is little “wiggle room” for mothers who are not independently wealthy. According to Briggs, people are often juggling multiple demands without adequate workplace support, compensation for at-home caregiving, or affordable childcare. As a result, their lives are only a “snow day” away from falling apart (p 21). This makes it even more difficult for a woman to have children—unless they are wealthy enough to hire a nanny.
NannyGate
As reported by former Facebook employee Sarah Wynn-Williams in Careless People, Sheryl Sandberg who branded herself as a champion of working mothers (and egg freezing), is a huge advocate of nannies. When Williams brought her child to several work events (which were not child-friendly at Facebook), Sandberg reportedly told her to simply hire a nanny from the Philippines to care for her children.
Women of color often underpin caregiving labor in the U.S. Many of these nannies who immigrate to the US (sometimes undocumented) are forced to leave their own children behind, a phenomenon Briggs calls ‘offshoring care’.
Offshoring care exploded at the start of Bill Clinton’s presidency in 1993—in a scandal known as ‘Nannygate’. Two of his female nominees for United States Attorney General (Zoë Baird, Kimba Wood) were derailed. Both were exposed for having hired undocumented nannies and not paying Social Security taxes for them. While there was moral outrage in 1992 over the exploitation of undocumented nannies in the U.S.—who were often expected to work without days off and sometimes lacked even a bed of their own—the backlash was not purely about labor conditions. As public opinion shifted towards stricter policing of undocumented immigrants, some of the outrage also seemed directed at the women themselves for pursuing high-profile careers rather than staying at home. A 1993 Newsweek article argued:
Notably, none of the male nominees faced comparable congressional scrutiny over their childcare arrangements, though when later surveyed by Newsweek claimed not have employed undocumented nannies in their home.
Capitalism & Egg Freezing
Screenshots of egg freezing ads when I googled egg freezing ads. Many white, thing, young women are depicted. Clocks are subtle symbol that keep showing up. Many ads equating future happiness with egg freezing. And too much pink.
Even more insidiously, is the whole ‘self-care’ thinly disguised as Capitalism when it comes to advertising in egg freezing. “Egg freezing is absolutely a form of self-care,” Gina Bartasi, the CEO of Kindbody, told the Guardian:
So many other areas of healthcare are proactive – we eat well, we watch our cholesterol, we exercise – but when it comes to fertility, the standard of care is to wait for there to be a problem.
Some have criticized these companies for targeting younger white women for egg freezing. Also, these ads gloss over the realities and limitations of the procedure, potentially creating a false sense of optimism and hope.
Egg freezing entered the public spotlight when Sandberg championed egg freezing for Facebook employees. This stance was considered a ‘controversial’ move in 2015—as dystopian, a personal overreach into private life, and discouraging women to reproduce during their so-called ‘peak years’. A few positively perceived it as a market-place remedy for lack of coverage for the procedure by insurance companies.
However, writer Bo Ren incisively branded the experience as ‘Tech Paternalism’. She described her experience as an employee of Facebook:
Campus was the tech Disneyland. All I had to do was devote myself to work and everything else would be magically taken care of. Aside from going home to sleep each night, often catching the last shuttle at 10pm back to the city, I basically lived on Facebook’s campus. The job was all-consuming—a mode of existence more than a role.
During the weekly Friday Q&A at Facebook, a female employee asked Sheryl Sandberg for guidance on how we should respond to the press about the company’s newfound egg-freezing perks. The press was making it sound like Facebook was pressuring its female employees to freeze their eggs in order to enable them to work longer and harder.
Sheryl replied, “Feel free to tell someone no one told you to freeze your eggs.” Hearing this made me feel empowered but also confused and conflicted. No matter how accommodating and neutral-sounding Facebook’s stance was on the matter. Part of me did feel pressured and guilty for not taking advantage of this company perk, as if letting my potential fertility go to waste.
By 2020, NBC reported that in the U.S., there is no single regulatory agency overseeing fertility centers, which are being taken over by for-profit companies. This is especially problematic—egg storage facilities have no oversite when it comes to freezing protocols and reporting failures.
The process from freezing to live birth has many fail-points—the ovaries may not produce enough eggs, the eggs may be damaged by freezing, they may not fertilize properly, or the fertilized embryos may not implant, and Vox reported in an expose:
Not to mention human error. In one case, a Bay Area clinic failed to pack the vials of eggs properly, and when they arrived in LA, all the eggs were destroyed. It was “one of the worst days of my life,” the woman who lost her eggs recalled.
A 2022 report exposed at least nine nation-wide storage tank failures over 15 years, affecting 1800 clients.
Furthermore, there is an apparently low rate of egg utilization, with only about 12 percent of patients worldwide retrieving their frozen eggs. Many actually conceive without assistance. While freezing eggs younger can increase success rate of a live birth, younger women are unlikely to use them.
Conclusion
I’ve gathered so much material on egg freezing, that I will put the next section in another article—it will focus on what egg freezing advertising implies about beauty culture, romance, and singledom. It’s always important to take a systemic view of new technological developments. Sure in the lab, it might seem harmless, but once the genie’s out the bottle it will be shaped by cultural, political, social, and economic forces. As biochemist and feminist Ruth Hubbard stated:
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References
Briggs, L. (2018). How all politics became reproductive politics: From welfare reform to foreclosure to Trump. University of California Press.
Briggs, L. (2018). How all politics became reproductive politics: From welfare reform to foreclosure to Trump. University of California Press.
Inhorn, M. C. (2023). Motherhood on Ice: The mating gap and why women freeze their eggs. New York University Press.
Sandberg, S. (2013). Lean in: Women, work, and the will to lead. Alfred A. Knopf.
Wynn-Williams, S. (2025). Careless people: A cautionary tale of power, greed, and lost idealism. Flatiron Books.
phenomenal, i had no idea about "offshoring"...looking very much forward to the rage i'll feel reading your part 2
I just wrote my first substack on egg freezing! It’s such an interesting and confusing time for those with eggs to freeze.