“Fertility. Freedom. Finally.”: Cultivating Hope in the Face of Uncertain Futures among Egg-Freezing Women

The Plasma Mobile, ‘A gift from heaven’: The impact of health technology transfer on trial perceptions and expectations during the Ebola-Tx Trial, Conakry

“…Hope in biomedicine has been studied from the point of view of patients as receptors of 'last hope' treatment, therapies or technologies in terms of risks and benefits (examples in [50,51]. Egg freezing and cord blood stem cell banks have also been seen as 'regimes of hope' for future gestations and therapies [52,53].…”

A Critical Age: Single Motherhood, Male Continuity, and the Making of Family and Nation in Israel

“…American discourses about egg freezing technology (oocyte preservation) bring together the narrative of hope in assisted reproduction and faith in biomedical progress (Franklin 1997) with middle-class assumptions about individual choice, time management, financial autonomy and responsible childbearing (Romain 2012). 5 Women who consider egg freezing (and who are targeted by clinic marketing) are educated, professional women portrayed as rational actors who manage risk and make sound investment decisions (Martin 2010;Romain 2012).…”

“…American discourses about egg freezing technology (oocyte preservation) bring together the narrative of hope in assisted reproduction and faith in biomedical progress (Franklin 1997) with middle-class assumptions about individual choice, time management, financial autonomy and responsible childbearing (Romain 2012). 5 Women who consider egg freezing (and who are targeted by clinic marketing) are educated, professional women portrayed as rational actors who manage risk and make sound investment decisions (Martin 2010;Romain 2012). As egg freezing is constructed as extending future choices and preserving the possibility of "having it all" (Romain 2012), an "ontological category" is created in which future infertility is extended to all women who are becoming obligated "to ensure their future reproductive capacity" (Martin 2010:531).…”

“…5 Women who consider egg freezing (and who are targeted by clinic marketing) are educated, professional women portrayed as rational actors who manage risk and make sound investment decisions (Martin 2010;Romain 2012). As egg freezing is constructed as extending future choices and preserving the possibility of "having it all" (Romain 2012), an "ontological category" is created in which future infertility is extended to all women who are becoming obligated "to ensure their future reproductive capacity" (Martin 2010:531). Given the unknown viability of frozen oocytes, when it comes to egg freezing technology, it is the idea of choice that gets preserved.…”

“…In the internet era, women's access to multiple and contested rabbinical interpretations of single motherhood reconfigures the meaning of the "crossroad" of later singlehood and the hegemony of religious authority. At this crossroad, egg freezing among the dati leumi in Israel is far more than a technical procedure or a matter of women's expanding choices in a consumeroriented paradigm of assisted reproduction (Martin 2010;Romain 2012). Given the magnitude of the perceived threat that comes from increasing choice and autonomy, Orthodox rabbis' and policymakers' discourses about egg freezing acknowledge that fertility preservation is crucially engaged with the future of the Jewish people, rather than individual women's reproductive routes.…”