Oocyte cryopreservation, also known as egg freezing
The idea? Extract a woman’s eggs
and keep them in a medical bank until the woman is ready to have a baby.
Modern women looking to start a family later in life
see this as a way to beat their biological clock.
However, in Asia, it's not so straightforward.
Asia’s future is now. It’s making massive strides in its economies,
human development, technology.
But for the region to truly reach its full potential,
it needs to empower women who face draconian laws and outdated customs.
I’m Natashya Gutierrez. In this series,
I meet the women who are directly impacted by these barriers.
Why are we still so unequal?
This all began because I personally started looking into egg freezing.
When I hit 30, I started to feel the pressures of having a baby
because everyone around me seemed to be having them.
But I'm not ready now and I'm not sure if I ever will be.
So here in Singapore, where I work, women are only allowed
to freeze their eggs if they have a medical condition.
In the Philippines, where I am from,
women are allowed to freeze their eggs
but can only use them if they get married.
Shouldn’t women be allowed to decide when to have babies?
Women, especially in Asia,
feel tremendous pressure to have babies from society
and from their families.
But more and more women today are choosing to delay their pregnancies
for social reasons like their career or finding a suitable partner,
making egg freezing an attractive option.
Amanda, an Australian expat living in Singapore, has her own reasons.
Amanda lost her husband to cancer
a few years ago while they were both working in Singapore.
They missed out on the opportunity to conceive while he was alive,
so she recently decided to freeze her eggs.
So how has freezing your eggs sort of opened you up to less of that pressure?
I think it’s meant that, you know, when I did it,
I was deep in grief. Right?
And, you know, after he died,
you don't think about how there's going to be an end to it, right?
Like you don't know how you're ever going to get out of it.
And so for me, freezing my eggs was something where it allowed me
to take control and it allowed me to not have to worry about
the next boyfriend or put pressure on,
like if he was going to be the person I was going to spend
the rest of my life with.
Because it meant that it gave me time.
After Ryan’s death, Amanda was forced to think about planning ahead.
She visited a fertility clinic to explore her options
and decided to freeze her eggs.
Egg freezing is essentially in vitro fertilization or IVF,
except rather than freezing an embryo,
it's only a woman's unfertilized reproductive eggs harvested from her
ovaries that are frozen.
When she’s ready for a baby,
the egg is later thawed, fertilized with a sperm,
and when it's successfully turned into an embryo,
it's implanted back into her uterus.
While the technology is available in Singapore, however,
Amanda had to go home to Australia for the procedure.
In Singapore, egg freezing is not permitted for social reasons.
It’s only allowed if a woman has medical conditions that would affect her fertility.
Such as a woman undergoing chemotherapy for cancer.
So for a woman like Amanda who want to freeze for nonmedical reasons,
they have to look outward and have
the procedure done in other countries which have more lenient laws.
But finding a country to do it is only the first of many obstacles.
How about the actual decision of putting your body through it?
I had many conversations about it and it's not an easy thing
on your body. Like you do...
You have a load of hormones put into your body during the process,
like you have to stab yourself with needles every few hours to make
sure that those hormones and you're producing as many eggs as you can.
I was crying for that entire three-week,
three-week process because of all the hormones in your body.
So it’s not an easy process at all.
But...
It was like a decision that at the end of the day
I had to make. Right? I was very lucky in that I got
a very good haul of eggs.
So I have a good stash sitting away, which is quite nice.
And I'm glad that I don't have to do it again.
I know women that had only had two or three eggs taken per round,
and I'm very lucky in that I got more than that.
So I don't have to put my body through that again because
I really wouldn't want to do that.
Despite that haul, how sure are we
that that will yield some children for you?
We’re not sure at all.
Amanda is right.
While the science allows for it to happen,
the odds of frozen eggs resulting in babies are still unclear.
It’s much harder to thaw an unfertilized egg without damage
than thawing an embryo.
So IVF with frozen eggs tend to be less successful.
The more eggs are retrieved and frozen from a woman,
the better their odds.
Early data from the Human Fertilisation
and Embryology Authority in the United Kingdom,
puts a success rate of live births from frozen eggs at just 19 percent.
In Australia, just 40 babies were born from frozen eggs in
the last two years.
On average, five hundred cycles of egg freezing are performed annually
in the country.
But to many women, these odds are better than nothing.
Despite the challenges of egg freezing,
women like Amanda still consider doing this as an option because of
the time that it affords them to decide when
and how they want to have children.
Ase Wang, a Singaporean actress, model and entrepreneur,
decided at the age of thirty-six to freeze her eggs after being told
by doctors she could have difficulty conceiving naturally.
In 2018, she flew to Bangkok to freeze her eggs.
She published a series of vlogs about her entire experience to raise
awareness about the issue.
Today she has some incredible news.
First of all, congratulations on your pregnancy!
Thank you!
So finally, the time is here.
That’s amazing! How far along are you?
I am five months today.
Ase also got married in 2020.
She successfully got pregnant through IVF on her first attempt.
She didn’t end up using any of her frozen eggs, but she has no regrets.
Since we last spoke, Ase has given birth to a healthy baby girl.
I think what people don't seem to understand
or that they don't think about is that yes,
we do have the option to freeze our eggs and we do have
the options to dig into those eggs.
But as a doctor, they would always want a fresh batch of eggs.
I froze my eggs when I was single and I feel like that was
the best gift I think anyone... a woman could give themselves.
And I do have 17 eggs stored, which I do not use,
but I can happily say now, that I feel secure.
While Ase is an advocate for social egg freezing
and allowing women to take control of their own timelines,
she does recognize that it’s a difficult decision.
Aside from legalities and the physical toll to the body,
there’s yet another crucial factor.
Cost.
In Australia, while those with medical reasons to freeze their eggs
can get government subsidies,
it can cost up to $10,000 to freeze your eggs for social reasons.
In Thailand, clinics charge $4,000
which does not include the monthly charges of storing those eggs,
as well as costs for the thawing,
the fertilization and the implantation.
And everyday woman might not have
the financial ability to be able to do what I did.
And a woman that’s working a nine to five job every day.
Are they able to take two weeks off to go fly to Bangkok to freeze their eggs?
Probably not. And then if they are, that’s great.
But then you've got to think of accommodation.
Are you going to pay for, I don't know,
an Airbnb or a hotel to stay for two weeks
on top of that medical bills?
Realistically, I mean, that’s really not every woman could do that.
Ase spent over $30,000 for her entire procedure.
She said the investment was worth the security
and control it afforded her.
She doesn’t just want to see social egg freezing legalized,
she also hopes to see government subsidize it,
particularly for single women who might need more help paying for it.
Ultimately, what would you want to see?
What do you think should the policy be
when it comes to women being able to freeze their eggs?
I think we should be able to do whatever we damn well want to do.
Like, I don’t feel like there should be a black and white.
As, you know,
“Oh, I have to be married to be able to go through IVF.”
I don’t feel like why do we need these rules?
We are capable of being our own parents of what we want.
We don't need people to tell us that this is what's good for you.
This is all part of life.
The technology may be here, but in reality,
women have a long way to go to have full freedom
and control over their bodies.
Until governments stop dictating when
and how women should give birth,
egg freezing is an option available only for a small sector of women.