The Biomedicalization of Social Egg Freezing

Abstract

In 2012, two major professional societies representing Europe and the United States released influential statements that would propel a commercial market for social egg freezing (SEF), in which women bank their oocytes for later use in order to avoid compromised fertility that comes with age. While the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) condoned SEF based on reproductive autonomy and justice, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) discouraged SEF based on insufficient data and concerns about false hope. In this article, we map the contexts and discursive moves by which the biomedicalization of SEF proceeded since 2012. We compare professional bioethical arguments that made the case to approve SEF in Europe with news and popular media discourse that formed and shaped the commercial marketization of SEF in the United States despite the recommendation of the ASRM. While a statist pronatalist perspective informed the former, a distinctly private labor market recruitment strategy utilizing a Lean In efficiency model of feminism buttressed the latter.

Freezing time? The sociology of egg freezing

“…In discussing egg freezing as a (bio)medicalizing technology, scholars emphasize how young women are entreated to think proactively about and optimize their future fertility through self‐surveillance and prophylactic treatment (Baldwin 2019; Bhatia & Campo‐Engelstein, 2018; Martin, 2010). This relates to the concept of “responsible reproductive citizenship” articulated by Carroll and Kroløkke (2018), in which egg freezing is part of a neoliberal strategy enacted by young women to fulfill their heteronormative, reproductive, and financial obligations as future intensive mothers and to “disentangle” romantic and reproductive timelines (Baldwin, 2017, 2019a; Brown & Patrick, 2018; Myers, 2017).…”

“…Working from Clarke et al. 's (2010) definition, these authors argue that biomedicalization extends medicalization by integrating the need to manage and mitigate risks and threats to health through preventative efforts and surveillance (Baldwin, 2019a, 2019b; Bhatia & Campo‐Engelstein, 2018; Martin, 2010). Baldwin (2019a, 2019b) argues that technologies intended to monitor and/or extend fertility (including egg freezing and ovarian reserve testing) advance the biomedicalization of reproductive aging.…”

“…These technologies help optimize the timing of conception and provide a type of “individualised risk knowledge” about fertility potential through “pseudo quantification” of the number of eggs they have “banked” for the future (Baldwin, 2019b). Bhatia and Campo‐Engelstein (2018) support the biomedicalization framework by outlining shifting discourses about nonmedical egg freezing in statements by professional medical associations and in media narratives. They identify a “two‐step process” of biomedicalization.…”

“…First, anticipated infertility is pathologized and medicalized, with egg freezing offered up as treatment. Second, egg freezing is reimagined as a feminist tool to simultaneously optimize women's life and fertility options (Bhatia & Campo‐Engelstein, 2018). Pushing this further within a reproductive justice framework, biomedicalized imperatives to optimize fertility could support nationalist, patriarchal, and white supremacist projects of reproductive control, tasking some groups and individuals to expand their fertility while clamping down on the reproductive options of others.…”

The Egg Rumour by Ellamae Cieslik

“…Frustrated and hurt by what she perceived as her boyfriend's manipulative behaviour, she remarked that by freezing her eggs she was offering her assumedly healthy body up for investigation and management and was thereby turning herself into a patient. She was aware, it seemed, of her pending induction into what has been referred to more broadly as the 'fertility industrial complex' (Bhatia and Campo-Engelstein, 2018).…”