Egg freezing, also known as mature oocyte cryopreservation, is a method used to save women's ability to get pregnant in the future. Eggs harvested from ovaries are frozen unfertilized and stored for later use. A frozen egg can be thawed, combined with sperm in a lab and implanted in uterus (in vitro fertilization).

Arguments in favor of egg-freezing:

Cryopreserving eggs offers hope to many working women who don’t have time to bear or raise a child at a certain time in their lives but would like to later. Women are principally motivated to have their eggs frozen by the fear of running out of time to form a conventional family, a desire to avoid future regret and blame, a difficulty in finding partners and critical life events. Those in favour of the technology believe it liberates women to order their lives how they will instead of being forced to march in step with their biological clocks. Egg-freezing is closer to the more individualistic approach in modern bioethics, which allows women to decide what to do with their bodies.

Arguments against egg-freezing:

The companies that incentivise egg-freezing see motherhood as a period of low productivity, and that they would prefer women to stay at work when they’re younger. Two, that older women could be less energetic parents as well as that children could lose their mothers at an earlier age. Finally, they have argued that egg-freezing together with in vitro fertilisation (IVF) has a low success rate (10-20%), leaving women susceptible to emotional trauma should they become unable to have children in the future.

Regulation issues in India:

Most countries, including France, Austria and Singapore, prohibit egg-freezing for non-medical purposes. India itself doesn’t have a law to regulate this area of reproductive health. The Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill of 2014 defined cryopreservation as the ‘freezing and storing of human gametes, zygotes and embryos’; section 52 of the Bill provided for the storage and handling of human gametes and embryos.In a report on the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill of 2016, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare recommended the highest possible standards for the storage and handling of human gametes for a maximum of five years for fees prescribed by the government. It also recommended that after five years, these gametes should be destroyed or donated to a registered research organisation. However, the Lok Sabha passed neither Bill, so the need to regulate this technology, and its many personal, societal and scientific ramifications, remains.

The social stigma around freezing eggs for the future still exists but, in its slow journey over the years, people have become a little more receptive. The credit for this goes to a few significant changes like openness in society, awareness about the changing trends, and importantly, women themselves.