Some employers are paying for egg freezing. Is that about helping you build

Toronto lawyer Salima Fakirani was 31 when she decided to freeze her eggs. She had been considering it for a couple of years, and had even gone for a consult at a fertility clinic. But when her employer introduced egg-freezing benefits, she decided to go for it.

She did two rounds of egg freezing and got a “good number” of her eggs into storage.

“I felt like I had bought myself a little bit of time,” she said. “I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.” She used to joke with her mom that her grandbabies were tucked in a freezer somewhere, so she didn’t have to worry anymore.

Fakirani had first heard about egg freezing from female colleagues at a big Toronto law firm. The idea is that you remove eggs from your ovaries when you’re young and keep them on ice until you need them, reducing the risk that you won’t be able to have kids when you’re finally ready.

The business of egg parties

Egg freezing is seen by some as a way for women to take control of their fertility. Other experts, though, caution that the fertility industry is just profiting off the tension women feel between career building and family building.

Egg cells are hard to freeze and thaw without causing damage. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that a technique known as “vitrification” came onto the scene.

In 2012, egg freezing was deemed no longer “experimental” — and it took off.

Fertility clinics wanted every young woman to know about it. They hosted “egg freezing parties” where young women could sip cocktails and learn about their dwindling egg supplies. They offered free fertility testing. They had catchy ads.

By 2014, a few of the big tech firms had introduced egg freezing benefits as part of their employment package. They believed it would help attract and retain female talent. And many women were interested.

But others felt uneasy.

“What does it actually convey to women when you say that your company will pay for egg freezing?” asks Lucy van de Wiel, a senior lecturer in global health and social medicine at King’s College London in the U.K., and author of a book called Freezing Fertility.

Some people feel it actually discourages reproduction, says van de Wiel: why have a family now when your employer is paying for you to put it off till later?

Unsure about parenthood? Buy more time

Van de Wiel is interested in the business side of fertility. Egg freezing, she says, offers the industry a great growth opportunity. In places where fertility is not covered by public health care schemes, clinics are increasingly controlled by private equity. And for private equity, she says, growth is king.

“It’s not enough to have good revenue, to have good profits,” she…