The Egg Timer Test: Direct-to-Consumer Fertility Testing for Women in the Age of Elective Egg Freezing

• In Event: Technomedicine and Reproduction

Abstract

Frequently branded the “Egg Timer Test,” direct-to-consumer fertility screening using a number of reproductive hormones is a burgeoning medical service. Facilitated by internet-based biomedical companies and aided by the consolidation of large-scale diagnostic laboratories, this type of fertility screening represents a new entrée point into the medico-technological possibilities often promised by advances in reproductive medicine. Easier access to screening aligns with visions of revolutionizing healthcare via more information in the hands of individuals (Lupton 2013; 2016), shifting from biomedicine to “info medicine” (Brown and Webster 2004). As the human body is increasingly made accessible through data, Egg Timer Testing has become a new tool in this larger American project of reproductive biosensing (Mort and Smith 2009; Wilkinson, Roberts, and Mort 2012). Childless women who desire biological children and test hormone levels are given more biological information but less certainty about their actual ability to conceive.
This paper presents data from an experimental ethnography project in which a group of women were given access to fertility screening services by a major US-based company and followed throughout the process. Using semi-structured interviews and participant observation, their experiences around anticipated future (in)fertility are traced to understand how new biomedical information influences a woman’s conception of self and understanding of her future. Ultimately, this paper asks, how do women respond to elective fertility testing and make meaning of the experience within their individual life course imaginaries—that is, the ways a woman projects her life proceeding from the current moment forward— in real time?

Author

• Moira Kyweluk, Northwestern University