Like a reader over the weekend, Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos casts doubt on the efficacy of egg-freezing:
Lost in all the cheerleading about empowerment and liberating women from their biological clocks is a more buzz-killing, underreported set of facts, which women and families would benefit tremendously in understanding. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) do not endorse the use of egg freezing to defer childbearing. The ASRM’s decision to lift the ‘experimental’ label from this still young procedure in 2012 only applied to medically indicated needs, such as women with cancer.
Moreover, there is no long-term data tracking the health risks of women who inject hormones and undergo egg retrieval, and no one knows how much of the chemicals used in the freezing process are absorbed by eggs, and whether they are toxic to cell development. Furthermore, even with the new flash freezing process, the most comprehensive data available reveals a 77 percent failure rate of frozen eggs resulting in a live birth in women aged 30, and a 91 percent failure rate in women aged 40.
Meanwhile, The Economist flags a new IVF innovation that is “simpler for the patient” and “obviously cheaper than the established way of doing things.” In other assisted-reproduction news, Vanessa Vitiello Urquhart urges her fellow lesbians to take a less superficial approach at the sperm bank:
For lesbian couples, there’s no getting around the fact that children aren’t the offspring of both parents, so closely matching physical characteristics has little relevance. Instead, lesbians ought to seek a fuller picture of the donor while ignoring irrelevancies that could prejudice them. Personal essays would be a great alternative starting place for women who think there’s more to a man than how tall he is and whether he squeaked out a BA in communications.
While exact numbers are hard to come by, it’s clear that lesbians make up a huge portion of the market for donor sperm. A representative from one large, mainstream tissue bank told me that 40 percent of its clients are lesbian, and at least one sperm bank has made helping lesbian families conceive its primary mission. At Pacific Reproductive Services, which proudly advertises its lesbian ownership, the preferences of lesbian clients have already had an impact on the way donors are chosen. Since lesbians tend to be upfront about their children’s origins, they’re more open to the possibility that the kids might one day wish to contact their genetic fathers. This has led PRS to better serve its client base by focusing on recruiting as many “willing to be known” donors as possible—that is, men who have declared their willingness to be contacted by adult children. Founder Sherron Mills also told me that the geneticist at PRS had convinced her that diversity in ethnic background can make for healthier children. “Mix up your child!” she said, “When you dilute those genes, you have a healthier child.” …
Relying heavily on superficial appearance may have made sense for heterosexual couples seeking donated sperm three decades ago. For modern lesbian parents, those physical descriptions come with a lot of unnecessary baggage.
The rest of the egg-freezing thread can be read here.
The Dish 