Sunday Night preview: The companies paying for women workers to freeze their eggs

MANY women are freezing their eggs to delay motherhood so they can keep working — and bosses are footing the bill. But tonight, Sunday Night asks: is it right?

MORE career women are choosing to freeze their eggs to delay motherhood until they’ve secured their ideal job or found the right partner.

It’s already a billion-dollar business in the United States and gaining more traction in Australia.

Now American companies are offering to foot the bill for female workers wanting to freeze their eggs and keep working. Is it revolutionising the workplace or interfering with mother nature? Does it empower or exploit women? Does it offer false hope? Where does the law stand?

And will Australian companies follow suit?

These are some of the complex questions reporter PJ Madam spent months grappling with for her revealing report on the billion-dollar fertility industry that airs on Seven’s Sunday Night tonight at 7pm.

Ms Madam said egg freezing was here to stay. In Australia, about one woman a week visits a fertility clicic to have her eggs frozen. In the US, it’s more like one woman a day. The growing trend is already making fertility companies billions of dollars in the US alone.

But it gets murky when it is promoted by companies, such as tech giants Apple and Facebook, as a way for female employees to better balance work and family planning.

Other companies have joined the trend, paying up to $AU20,000 for each female worker’s egg freezing process.

“It’s this weird transaction. From your company you get (the benefit of) not having to worry about the costs associated with freezing your eggs. They get from you more years of work, loyalty, dedication, productivity, and the idea that maybe you’ll come back to them afterwards,” she told news.com.au

Seven reporter PJ Madam speaking to a woman undergoing the egg freezing process.

“It still doesn’t fix the problem, though, because having kids is still being seen as a problem. If you’re on your way up the ladder and you’re stopping to have kids (these companies) are like, ‘Well, we’d love you to have kids and we’ll fund it but maybe not right now’.

“The other weird element is about who owns the eggs. If your company paid for your eggs, what if you left (your job)? What if you got sacked? What if the company fell into a heap? Is it going to be this weird scenario where you have to fight over these little eggs in a freezer? Legally there are no rules around who owns these eggs that someone else has paid for.

“It’s a bit odd and it’s tricky and we’re not seeing the impact of it at the moment. It will take a couple of more years to see how this trend is trending.”

The story took Ms Madam to the US, where she hunted down companies that are reportedly paying for their female workers to undergo the process.

But ever since Facebook and Apple copped flak last year for announcing it would offer the perk to their workers, Ms Madam found many companies were keeping mum on the subject.

“When (Facebook and Apple) stuck their heads up and got so completely slammed they just went to ground, and many companies will not speak about it,” she said.

“We know that JP Morgan and, I think, Citigroup are also offering it, but no one wants to speak on the record about it. We have spent two months knocking on doors, back doors, side doors and side windows, and it has been impossible to speak to someone. And we suspect if women are taking up the offer from their employer they are probably signing confidentiality agreements as well.”

PJ Madam said she visited one fertility clinic where one woman a day was having her eggs frozen.

The growing fertility industry is marketing egg freezing as a way for women to pause their biological clock until they get their career on track or find the right partner, and thereby “have it all”.

Madam said the $AU10,000 process included up to 12 days of self-administered injections, also known as “hormone blasting”, which gave women “about a years’ worth of PMT”. The eggs are then extracted under general anaesthetic and stored. Hopefully the woman produced at least 10 eggs — the minimum amount required for IVF down the track.

And while Madam said she was “a big believer in women doing whatever the hell they want”, she couldn’t help wondering if the process offered women false hope. Science can’t always outrun mother nature, she said. Egg freezing offered no guarantee of a baby.

“It gives them a chance, a bit of insurance and piece of mind. But should they be relying on it? No,” she said.

“When you’re signing up for egg freezing you’re also automatically signing up for a round of IVF and that in itself brings a whole set of complications as well.

“It’s being billed as something to give you insurance, or as the girls like to say, ‘egg-surance’, but at the same time ... they may wake up and realise, ‘Wow, I’m 44, my eggs are 34, but I can’t carry the baby or the eggs don’t work or I still need to find a sperm donor’. And it’s still too new to work out whether or not egg freezing is safe to do and if there is any effect chromosome-wise on these eggs.”

One of the critics of egg freezing that Ms Madam spoke to was Miriam Zoll, author of the book Cracked Open: Liberty, Fertility, and the Pursuit of Hi-tech Babies.

“Her whole premise is that women are lulled into a false sense of security and that assisted reproductive technology doesn’t always work for everyone,” Madam said.

The concept of egg freezing is even being sold at cocktail parties in the US.

“They can’t rely on science to help out — their biological clock won’t last forever.

“At the same time, she was trying to stress that if women wanted to have children and a career at the same time — and so they should — companies should be looking at, say, childcare, or having shorter hours or better working hours, so women can have it all.

“So for every woman they are willing to pay for egg freezing for, which is $20,000 a pop, how much would it cost to build a childcare centre downstairs? It would be a compelling case to support working women — and working fathers as well.

Madam added she was curious to see if Australian companies picked up the idea.

“Egg freezing is here to stay, it is certainly growing in popularity and it is coming down under,” she said.

“So I would imagine there will be some very bold, big business who decides to do something revolutionary for women, but at the same time, will they back themselves? I hope we will get to hear about it and the benefits of doing it.”

PJ Madam’s report To Freeze or Not to Freeze airs tonight on Sunday Night at 7pm on Seven.