Baby? Maybe. Why these Gen Z women are freezing their eggs

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The first time Shania Bhopa considered freezing her eggs was over dessert during Christmas Day dinner with her family a couple of years ago.

Bhopa was only 24 years old at the time but already had a promising career ahead as a published children’s author, running a non-profit organization with her sister and was pursuing a PhD in global health.

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Her older sister, a physician, broached the topic.

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“Shania, you don’t seem like you would have kids early,” Bhopa recalls her sister saying. “But I know you’ve always wanted to be a mom. Have you ever given any consideration as to what your plan looks like?”

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“No,” Bhopa replied.

Her sister asked a new question. “Well, have you thought about freezing your eggs?”

The question caught Bhopa by surprise. She had heard of egg freezing before — overhearing conversations between her sister and her friends — but until that moment had never talked about it or thought of it as a family planning or fertility option. She had always assumed egg freezing was a last resort for those who had already tried and failed to have a child by traditional means.

“Why would I be proactive when it’s a reactive procedure?” she recalled thinking. Her sister, however, was persistent and so Bhopa decided to investigate the topic.

As an academic accustomed to research, she dove deep. She read every paper she could find, and by the end of it she was convinced.

“It was kind of like just a really logical decision,” she said. “I researched, statistically, at age 35 the egg quality and count, and the risk of abnormalities there, and if that’s the age I perceive my career starting to stabilize, then I should probably freeze my eggs.”

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Bhopa’s story is an unusual one and for good reason: There aren’t a lot of stories told publicly of women in their early 20s who have considered or decided to freeze their eggs as a way to preserve their fertility down the road.

Encouraged by her sister and partner, Bhopa, a well-established influencer with over 108,000 followers on Instagram and even more on TikTok, vlogged her egg freezing journey online and became a viral sensation for her story, hailed as the “girl who decided to freeze her eggs at 25.”

Along with her own vlogs, she has hosted Q&As, interviews with experts and inspirational reels meant to shed light on the process and educate her followers on the concept.

Looking back, Bhopa is surprised that she and her friends, many of whom are in medicine and academia, had never thought to talk about egg freezing before.

“We all have such long roads ahead of us,” she said. “In retrospect, I’m like, ‘Oh, I can’t believe none of us were talking about it.”

Egg freezing — known medically as oocyte preservation — has been in the works since the 1980s, primarily as a last resort for those undergoing major surgeries or with serious medical illnesses. Rarely was it considered as a family planning alternative. The latter, better known as social egg freezing, became more mainstream after the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) deemed the procedure “non-experimental” in 2012.

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“It definitely raised the awareness that egg freezing is now commercially available,” said Dr. Ari Baratz, one of Canada’s leading fertility experts and part of the medical team at the Create Fertility Centre in Toronto. “That really sparked demand.”

In the years since, it has increasingly become an option in family planning. This has forced a re-examination of “fertility” — what that means and how it is discussed among individuals and couples, and patients and their doctors.

I was terrified to freeze my eggs because of all the unknowns and questions and shame and insert my excuse.

Missy Modell

For those with ovaries, it has meant being able to “realize their reproductive autonomy” and providing a sense of agency in one’s own reproductive aging — in other words, being liberated from their biological clocks. For couples, both heterosexual and those within in the LGBTQ+ community, it has meant being able to be more strategic about parenthood in terms of timing or priorities such as careers or financial stability or even relationship stability.

It’s a conversation of the modern age, bolstered by lifestyle, career and societal changes. As recently as 2022, social media platforms saw a surge of videos, vlogs and posts shared on the topic, by doctors looking to educate, and by people who have gone through the process and wanted to share their experiences.

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Reproductive rights were hotly contested during the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Donald Trump made headlines when he proposed expanding access to invitro fertilization (IVF) treatments by having them paid for either by government or by insurance companies, a move criticized by some conservative groups for the practice of discarding unused embryos after a successful live birth via IVF.

The U.S. president issued an executive order in February to expand IVF access, although it’s unclear how long it could take to see changes to out-of-pocket costs.

Any conversation about reproductive rights comes with ethical quandaries, and in the case of egg freezing, it’s the thorny matter of “biological insurance.” What level of autonomy does it truly offer those considering it?

“I don’t think we’re completely going to put the brakes on fertility,” Baratz said, adding that egg freezing was always meant to be viewed as a way to “augment the ability to have a baby or even a larger family.”

The ‘stigma’

Bhopa is no stranger to the spotlight. As a child, she acted in television shows and currently teaches a curriculum on artificial intelligence. “I always did public stuff,” she said.

Her persona on social media, before posting about her egg freezing, was “more guarded,” she said. “This is the place where I have to be professional.”

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If it hadn’t been for her sister and her boyfriend encouraging her, Bhopa said she wouldn’t have considered sharing her egg-freezing story on a public platform.

Bhopa recalled her sister telling her: “You know, when I was your age, I just wish I had someone to look up to, to even start this conversation.”

Her boyfriend, also a physician, had stressed that being vocal about her journey would be “pushing so many barriers for women.”

“For example,” Bhopa adds, “talking about not having kids right after you get married or not having to get married right after you’ve done school, and just pushing the gender norms that are often circulated.”

She was initially reluctant — “I was very, very, very hesitant to share this journey online,” Bhopa explained in a YouTube video. “It’s a very intimate thing.” But she decided to share her journey to encourage more open conversations around fertility and family planning and postponing pregnancy.

“I think that fertility, women’s health and planning for a family can be quite taboo for very many people and many cultures worldwide,” she continued. “And breaking down that stigma a little bit and opening up the conversation about fertility … and taking control and being empowered about making the plans necessary, to allow you to feel comfortable about your decisions.”

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It was the same stigma and lack of public conversation that kept Missy Modell, an American comedian, influencer and businesswoman from deciding to go through egg freezing until her late 30s.

“The reason I waited so long was because I didn’t see anyone captured in this way … like, the day-to-day,” she said. “I run a company. I have to be high functioning. I was also terrified of doing that to myself. What are the hormones going to do to me?”

Like Bhopa, Modell decided to publicly vlog her journey to push back against the social stigma and take control of the conversation.

“I was terrified to freeze my eggs because of all the unknowns and questions and shame and insert my excuse,” she posted to her stories on Instagram on the first day of her egg-freezing journey. “I wanted to pull back the curtain and hope that if some people were really on the fence for reasons that had nothing to do with the outcome … I wanted to help people feel comfortable with it.”

The stigma, while much less palpable than it might have been five or 10 years ago, “is not completely smashed,” Baratz said. “Obviously, it is still a personal issue.”

In 2018, U.K. researchers interviewed 31 women who had undergone egg freezing to better understand their experiences. “Few women perceived freezing as involving physical risks,” the researchers wrote. “However, many participants reported the process of egg freezing as emotionally challenging, primarily linked to feelings of isolation and stigma due to their single status.”

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A 2021 Canadian study yielded similar results. It found that 89 per cent of the 224 women who took part said they chose to freeze their eggs because they were single and had not yet found a partner.

By the time social egg freezing arrived on the scene, a woman was statistically more likely to have her first child by the age of 28, according to Statistics Canada — a noticeable jump from the 1970s, when a woman would typically have her first child by the age of 24.

However, unlike men, who remain fertile long into their senior years, a woman’s fertility peaks between her teen years and late 20s, and is likely to decline after age 30, presenting a conundrum for those looking to balance their professional lives with their desire for parenthood.

For those looking to further their careers without the fear of running out the biological clock, social egg freezing became an attractive opportunity to have it all. Initially, women, mostly in their late 30s and 40s, attended consultations, information sessions and “egg-freezing cocktail parties” hosted by fertility clinics wanting to rebrand egg freezing as something positive, rather than a bleak last resort.

“Originally, it started as a way for the older demographic of people with ovaries to hold on to their fertility,” said Carolynn Dube, the executive director for Fertility Matters Canada. “And people still use it for that reason now, but we’re seeing a younger group of people considering it for future use. It’s like an insurance plan.”

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Jeanette Chen, 40, who works in human resources, said she first considered freezing her eggs a decade ago, around the time of a big breakup.

The breakup, she said, played a part, but her decision to pursue egg freezing was largely motivated by age. Chen was turning 28 and getting older meant becoming more conscious of “social conventions” around marriage and motherhood, as well as thinking about her fertility aging, she said.

However, the newness of the idea and lack of access around it curtailed her understanding of what egg freezing really meant. “I knew this idea of egg freezing existed, conceptually what it was like and what it was intended for,” she said of her conversations with friends back then. “Some of my friends might say, ‘Oh, I’m thinking about egg freezing,’ but that’s it. It’s like a blanket statement.”

By the time she finally decided to go ahead with the process at 38, the scene had shifted substantially, she said. Several of her friends had frozen their eggs, either as part of an IVF treatment or otherwise. “I do think it’s a bit better now because people are more open about it,” Chen added.

Access to information, both socially and regionally, can play a big role in an individual’s understanding and willingness to talk openly about fertility, Dube explained. For big urban centres such as Toronto and Montreal, the conversation might be more prominent than in less-populated regions, where access to fertility specialists and clinics may not be as easy.

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“It’s still a relatively new process in a lot of parts of the country outside of these bigger cities,” Dube explained. “I think just having access to the knowledge and experts geographically is one piece.”

Dube notes the surge in conversations about egg freezing online, especially among young professionals. “But openly sharing it, especially in a place where an employer or a potential employer could find you, is problematic,” she said. “Because it opens you up to someone saying, ‘Oh, she’s thinking about having children someday,’ and you’re internally thinking about how that might impact your growth at the company.”

It’s an investment like any other and I’m really empowered by it.

Shania Bhopa

Bhopa acknowledged that much of her own hesitation to share her story came from the same place. “I’m going to be an academic and have students and colleagues and principal investigators for grants that could potentially see this,” she said.

Even among friends and acquaintances, the subject isn’t exactly a trending topic. Antoinette Twiver said she learned about egg freezing in university while watching an episode of The Mindy Project, a popular sitcom on the life of a lovelorn gynecologist. She didn’t know how many of her own friends had considered or had gone through the process until she made the decision to freeze her own eggs at age 29, in 2023.

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She was “surprised” when she learned a number of friends “have been going through this process as well and maybe not sharing it.”

Twiver, who has a following of over 42,000 on TikTok, shared her experience on her TikTok to help others learn more about the process — “if this video helps even one person learn a little bit about the process then it would be worth it,” she said.

“I do think that it is something that is tiptoed around a bit,” Chen said. “It’s a hard topic for people to initiate because people aren’t sure about the circumstances of the other people.”

The medical side of egg freezing

For close to 20 years, Dr. Sony Sierra has worked in the medical field as a reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist. The physician is deputy medical director with TRIO fertility, a chain of fertility clinics in the Greater Toronto Area that receives patients for a range of fertility issues.

She has seen the conversation around egg freezing and preserving fertility change dramatically in the years since the ASRM ruling to deem the procedure as non-experimental.

“Ten years ago, I barely did egg-freezing cases,” she said. “And now it’s hugely busy, our egg-freezing program. And I think a lot of it comes from the knowledge of it being an option.”

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Before the ASRM 2012 decision, doctors and experts largely viewed the procedure as reactive rather than proactive, mostly suggested in cases of infertility or a serious illness or major surgery that could impact a person’s fertility.

Since the ruling, the number of cases around the country has soared — from 94 in 2013 to more than 1,500 in 2022, according to CARTR, a Canadian database that tracks fertility procedures performed in Canada.

Ten years ago, less than two per cent of patients who visited Sierra’s clinic came to consult or pursue egg freezing. By 2022, 15 per cent of patients visiting TRIO planned to pursue egg freezing, prompting the team to open EVOLVE, Canada’s first egg-freezing clinic, in March 2023.

As part of the process, a woman injects herself daily, for two weeks, in the belly or upper thighs with hormonal drugs to stimulate her ovaries to produce around 10 to 15 mature eggs. The more eggs to freeze, the more likely one of those eggs, once thawed, will be fertilized with sperm and lead to a pregnancy.

Once the optimal size and number of eggs has been generated, the eggs are retrieved from the ovaries via an ultrasound-guided needle, flash-frozen and stored in tanks of liquid nitrogen.

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“We (get) about 200 inquiries a month,” Sierra said. “And that’s just people picking up the phone or emailing through the website. That doesn’t include physician referrals that come from doctors and gynecologists out there in the field.”

Opening up a separate clinic, she explained, allowed the team to be more proactive in offering support to people reluctant to come to a typical fertility lab, “where there are married couples who are very stressed out trying to conceive,” Sierra explained. “A waiting room in a fertility clinic, it’s a different environment.”

Reproductive awareness

Fertility education is a relatively new concept. As recently as 2017, the term “fertility awareness” was introduced as a definition in the International Glossary on Infertility and Fertility Care.

The fertility conversation, Baratz explained, has long focused around the don’ts rather than the dos. “A lot of sexual health education is based around infection prevention and healthy lifestyle, but also avoiding unwanted pregnancy. … We’ve forgotten how to turn that message off.”

Medical providers have become more aware of the proactive role they have to play in discussions with patients, he said, initiating conversations about reproductive health and asking questions such as, “Have you thought about how you’re going to approach building your family?”

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Medical professionals are increasingly being invited to universities and schools to talk to younger people about their reproductive health and to heighten awareness around fertility. And more than 50 private fertility clinics have popped up across the country providing resources to individuals looking for fertility consultations.

The conversations about egg freezing, however, have an added layer of complexity. Not only are there the details of the process — the costs, the side-effects of hormone treatment, the risks — decisions must be made on how the eggs will be used and stored.

Baratz said that means asking a patient if they have a plan for their eggs: Do they plan to use the eggs as a first or last resort when trying to have a child? Are they able to afford the cost of yearly storage? How many children do they plan to have, with or without the eggs? Have they considered other alternatives to fertility planning?

“In a responsible consultation, egg freezing is just a handle to discuss the full spectrum of what’s available.”

It also means addressing the popular perception of egg freezing as biological insurance — “that’s part of informed consent,” Baratz added.

Maybe, baby

Freezing your eggs, experts stress, does not guarantee the birth of a child. The overall success rate of egg freezing can depend on any number of factors, such as a person’s age and the number and quality of eggs retrieved. It’s also possible for eggs to not survive the thawing process or not be successfully fertilized by sperm.

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At EVOLVE, the rule of thumb is, the more, the better. “For example, individuals aged 30 to 34 have an 80 per cent chance or higher of a live birth later. In contrast, freezing between two and eight eggs results in a 20 to 52 per cent chance of a live birth,” the clinic explains on its website.

“At the same time, with increasing age, research shows it may take more frozen eggs to achieve a successful pregnancy”.

The American Society of Reproductive Medicine issued the same caution when announcing their decision to drop the “experimental” label — that the procedure is not a guarantee for having a baby.

“We think we should proceed cautiously in using this as an elective technique, especially in older patients,” stated Dr. Eric Widra, chairman of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology practice committee in 2012.

“There is an inherent conflict between the desire to freeze eggs and the need to freeze eggs. Freezing eggs for the future sounds like a good insurance policy but may not be an insurance policy that needs to be cashed in,” he stated.

Baratz chooses his words carefully when describing the risks and benefits of the procedure. “It can be referred to as biological insurance with big quotes around it, because that may not solve the story,” he said. “What we always tell you as part of the consent process is that you’re doing this as part of your fertility journey.”

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And, compared to other procedures, which may involve greater medical risks, egg freezing is a relatively safe procedure, Baratz added.

“So, the downside is very minimal, other than the cost of the procedure … But if they’re in the right demographic where it’s feasible, it’s a great option.”

Insurance and the costs of egg freezing

For many, being able to afford the cost of freezing eggs is where the barrier to access comes in.

Below Bhopa’s TikTok video — titled, “4 takeaways after freezing my eggs at 25” — the most common question asked was about the cost.

“How much did this cost? I’m thinking of doing this?” one user asked.

“What’s the cost?” asked Leslie&Mj.

“How much was it? Does your insurance cover it?” a TikTok user who goes by Kathleen posted.

In a separate video, Bhopa broke down the costs of her egg freezing process. “Eighty per cent of my medication was covered by insurance,” she explained in the video, “but the total cost without insurance would have been $4,000.”

“My procedure was not covered by insurance, but for a lot of people it is,” she said, adding that the cost for her egg retrieval came to $9,750, which included the fees for storing the eggs for five years — $500 per year, according to Bhopa, who displayed her invoices in the background of the video as she detailed the costs of the process.

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“So, the actual cost of the procedure alone, including anesthetic and everything like that, is $7,000.”

Bhopa went on to explain that she was able to afford it by getting a second job that same year and “saving up extremely well.”

“It’s an investment like any other and I’m really empowered by it,” she added.

But she acknowledged that without insurance covering the cost of medication, she would not have been able to afford the service. “That was my main driver,” she said in an interview with Postmedia.

Likewise, Twiver said she was “lucky to be able to tap into” her company’s health insurance benefits, which includes egg freezing.

Without insurance, Twiver said the entire cost would have come to $12,000, for the procedure and medication. If insurance wasn’t available, Twiver said she would have relied on support from her family, but “having access via coverage obviously made the decision much easier.”

My initial reaction was just pure shock. I was highly disappointed, of course. And then anger … Up to $35,000 a year?

Sehrish Qureshi

In the past decade, Canadian and U.S. companies, mostly in banking and tech, have added fertility benefits to their employees’ insurance coverage.

Some Canadian banks now offer up to $60,000 in fertility treatments to be accessed over a lifetime, according to a report by Fertility Matters Canada. The Bank of Montreal increased the lifetime maximum for fertility drugs to $20,000 and reimburses employees $20,000 each in fertility treatment and surrogacy expenses. RBC and TD offer similar coverage plans with $20,000 for fertility treatments and medication, up to a lifetime maximum of $60,000, while CIBC recently began covering $15,000 for treatment drugs, to a lifetime maximum of $30,000. Scotiabank offers $10,000 in coverage for fertility treatment in addition to medication, and $10,000 for surrogacy expenses, for a maximum lifetime benefit of $30,000.

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Big technology companies such as Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft are leading the way in offering fertility coverage to their employees. Snap is among the most generous, with workers eligible for up to $65,000 in fertility and adoption coverage through Carrot Fertility, and up to $130,000 toward surrogacy expenses.

On the one hand, these company policies can be a big plus for employees interested in the service who fear emptying their bank accounts. And it can be a stress-reliever for women looking to balance their careers with future parenthood.

“If the cost of the investment is no longer an element to be taken into consideration, even women who are less worried about finding a partner ‘in time’ may become interested in banking, which will lower the average age and thus raise the quality of the banked eggs,” Heidi Mertes, an associate professor in medical ethics at Ghent University, wrote in a 2015 paper.

On the other hand, it can promote a bias around egg freezing as the golden ticket out of the claws of the biological clock and encourage women, sometimes “against their better judgment” to defer parenthood in lieu of a better professional reputation, Mertes wrote.

For those without the option of insurance, or a big enough bank account, costs remain a major barrier.

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“My initial reaction was just pure shock,” Sehrish Qureshi, 31, said of her reaction when she researched the costs of egg freezing for herself. “I was highly disappointed, of course. And then anger … I’m not expecting it to be affordable, because it’s a luxury service, but up to $35,000 a year? That’s definitely not what I was expecting.”

She said the cost of the service put her off wanting to explore the idea. “I just never looked at it again.”

High costs are partly why it’s more common to see individuals in their mid- to late 30s look to egg freezing rather than those in their 20s, Baratz said.

“If someone was going to have to make significant financial decisions on whether to do egg freezing or not, then I would discourage them. But if it’s feasible, it’s a great option,” he said.

For Bhopa, the road to freezing her eggs was an arduous and expensive one, but she has no regrets. “I can’t control time, but I can control what I do with my time,” she said in a YouTube video.

“I only want children when I know I have the time for it. I just don’t think the career goals I have over the next couple of years are feasible in regard to my biological clock … knocking on my door.”

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