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Most women have two ovaries; I only have one. When I was 12, I had an emergency surgery that removed my right ovary and fallopian tube. Nearly a decade later, for unrelated reasons, I almost lost my left ovary—and my ability to ever have biological children. To a 12-year-old girl, that threat hadn’t meant much. To a young woman lying half-naked on an operating table, it meant a good deal more. Doctors urged me to freeze my eggs. I started asking questions.
The median age of U.S. women giving birth is now 30, the highest on record. Modern dating is abysmal. Gen Z is panicking about their fertility. It’s no wonder why, for those who can access it, the egg freezing industry is booming (even as states continue to restrict access to reproductive health care and IVF is both a legal and religious target). In 2009, 482 healthy women in the U.S. froze their eggs. In 2022, 22,967 did—more than a 4,000 percent increase in just over a decade.
I was supposed to be one of those women. That was the plan. After three different doctors strongly recommended I freeze my eggs, I began the process. And then in the course of reporting and researching a book about egg freezing, I decided not to do it.
Assurance. Empowerment. Time. This is what women who freeze their eggs are after, and for many, the grueling procedure is worth the peace of mind it brings.
When I began reporting on egg freezing a decade ago, most people furrowed their brows at the phrase. (“Like, chicken eggs?” a guy once asked me on a date.) If it was talked about at all, it was in a doctor’s office or in low murmurs with a friend over coffee, not at happy hour with co-workers or across the internet, as it’s discussed today. Now, egg freezing has exploded into our vernacular. (As well as, for a certain subset of women, their health insurance: In 2015 just 5 percent of large employers covered egg freezing as part of their benefits packages; in 2023, nearly one in five did.)
But while egg freezing has shed much of the stigma it once had, we don’t talk enough about its darker side, particularly with regard to the emotions and motivations that drive many women to put their eggs on ice. Desperation. Judgment. Pressure. Feeling like a failure.
One late summer night when I was 27 and living in Brooklyn, I arrived home after being out of town for my brother’s wedding. I took the subway from the airport and by the time I arrived at my street it was quite late. I pulled my purple suitcase along the sidewalk and wondered how many times I’d done this exact thing. A fierce loneliness took hold. As I walked, I felt as if a hole in my heart was growing bigger, block by block. Inside my empty apartment, I unpacked, made a ham sandwich, stood at the kitchen island, and cried. Then I shook my head hard, as if to fling off the sobs. Stop it, I berated myself. You’ve lived on four continents and traveled all over the world. You’re close with your family. You’re earning a master’s degree from one of the top journalism programs in the country. My life was full—but I felt deeply alone. I wanted to lug my suitcase next to someone else lugging theirs, then climb the stairs to my fifth-floor walk-up together. I wanted to make this ham sandwich for someone else.
My last serious relationship had ended two years earlier, and I was ready to not be single anymore. I wasn’t yet facing the intense time pressures I knew single women in their thirties often feel, and I wasn’t old enough to worry about the expiration of my fertility. But my missing ovary was beginning to haunt me, saying otherwise. It used to remind me of painful surgeries and hospital stays; now it reminded me of the quiet ticking of my biological clock and my desire to have a family. Like many of the dozens of egg freezers I’d spoken with since doctors had urged me to put my eggs on ice in order to protect my ability to have biological children, I wanted to buy myself time to focus on my career, pursue relationships until I found The One, and above all, control the unknown as best I could.
Egg freezing is aggressively marketed as a sure thing, but success rates vary. In one groundbreaking and relatively robust 2022 study, which provided numbers where little comprehensive national data exists, the chance of a live birth from frozen eggs was 39 percent—not terrible, but nothing close to a guarantee. Long-term reliable data on the procedure is scarce, in part because more than 85 percent of people worldwide who’ve frozen their eggs haven’t returned to use them. Many who do find that the procedure doesn’t work the way they’d hoped. That’s most often because not all eggs survive the thawing process, and women typically don’t freeze enough eggs, or at a young enough age.
Despite the limited data on its efficacy and possible long-term health concerns, egg freezing is seen as one of the best technological solutions available for women hoping to Have It All. That’s me. I’m one of those women. I wanted it all. I grew up knowing I’d have a career and a family, that I could and would play just as hard as the boys. Women of my generation are taught to never give up, to always be striving, to pursue happy endings—whether by holding out for them or by manifesting them. This mindset is true in love and in the pursuit of motherhood, where discussions are rife with talk of miracles and perseverance. On the surface, anything seems possible. But when we dig deeper, we find we are following a dangerous myth: the illusion that any woman who tries hard enough can have whatever she dreams of, whenever she wants it, as long as she takes matters into her own hands.
My late twenties into the beginning of my thirties were a tumultuous and tender few years. I went through two painful breakups. I struggled to pay my bills and racked up thousands of dollars in credit card debt. I drank too much. My fertility, while in many ways the least of my problems, felt like one more thing to have to juggle. At this peak of uncertainty and vulnerability, I reached a point where I was ready to do almost anything to manipulate my fertility and my body to better fit the timeline my heart and brain wanted.
In the context of social pressures, egg freezing is an easy sell. I felt bolstered after learning that what egg freezing does definitively offer is significant: Frozen eggs make many women feel more empowered in terms of their fertility, whether they ever use them or not. Egg freezing can change how a woman dates—for quality instead of speed—and can protect against regret down the line. Simply having a backup option, even a shaky one, shifts how a woman considers the demands of biology and time, and can transform her personal life in profound ways. For many women I interviewed, freezing their eggs invited what came next. It helped them be more open, willing, and accepting. Egg freezing didn’t solve their biggest questions—should I have children, and with whom?—and they also contended with the facts about age-related fertility decline and the nitty-gritty of the procedure’s success rates. Being realistic about the odds helped them see egg freezing as providing (some) assurance, rather than a guarantee. And crucially, they were careful not to mistake freezing eggs for freezing time.
Ultimately, deciding not to freeze my eggs is what allowed me the same clarity. The limited data and false sense of control the procedure proffers led me to see egg freezing as a faulty promise—which, for me, was not worth the prohibitive cost and health risks. But grappling with the decision, as well as the promises and perils of reproductive technologies, was deeply valuable. It forced me to get educated about my eggs and hormones and to acknowledge how fervently I’d staked my identity on my fertility and ability to become pregnant on my carefully constructed timeline. It also revealed the degree to which the constant pressure to manage my body and my potential to have babies is deeply intertwined with society’s expectations, and my experience, of being a woman. Something which, now that I am acutely conscious of, I cannot unsee.
Now, I’ve stopped trying to crystal-ball my fertility and figure out what lies ahead when it comes to my remaining ovary and future parenthood. If, when I am ready to become pregnant, I find I am not able to have biological children, I can only hope it won’t be the end-all scenario I once imagined it would be. My mother’s words from years ago come back to me: You still would have had kids, she’d said softly, squeezing my hand as I woke up from the surgery that saved my ovary. Even if they’d had to take it out, you would still someday be a mother.
Egg freezing will continue to help thousands of women conceive on timelines that suit them. It will also continue to devastate scores of women with broken promises. As a journalist, I hope that as egg freezing’s popularity continues to skyrocket, more people with ovaries will be able to sift the science from the hype and get very clear on the true benefits and limitations of this powerful, imperfect technology so they can make better informed decisions that align with their individual desires, values, and life plans.
And as a woman, I hope for a reckoning: a collective acceptance that no technology is a panacea for the difficult questions that arise in our lives, and that the science and the story—yours, mine, and of egg freezing—is still unfolding.