THREAD ‘Should the NHS fund social egg freezing for women aged 30-35? As an active researcher with multiple papers published on this topic I would say no for EIGHT reasons. Here we go... #bbcwato
1) Such a move would put further undue responsibility on women for ensuring appropriately timed conception and where there is ‘responsibility’ there is always BLAME!
2) It puts assumedly HEALTHY women through the (not risk or pain free) process of IVF potentially unnecessarily #medicalisation #bbcwato
3) Women may be falsely reassured by their eggs which could fail to provide a live birth, after all the success rates of IVF even in women under 35 are NOT high and have been somewhat stagnant for some time #bbcwato
4) My research speaking to users of #eggfreezing told me how they avoided telling partners or potential partners about their frozen eggs as it can lead to men further delaying conception acting as a further ‘drag’ on women’s (in this case frozen) fertility
5) Do we really want more women and couples to undergo IVF (an emotionally, physically, and financially painful process) to have their babies? #bbcwato
6) More frozen egg babies means more ICSI babies- and questions remain about the long term effect of this technique
7) It takes two (and sometimes more) to make a baby, such a move would further ignore the pretty central role men play in reproductive timing #bbcwato
8) JUST- culture medium
I have thought of more issues whilst tweeting but will just say finally as an aside, when the women don’t need these eggs anymore do clinics get to keep them and (with women’s permission) sell them on as part of an egg donation cycle? 🤑🤑🤑
