Egg Freezing and the Financialization of Fertility

• In Event: Capitalizing Fertility: Feminist STS Approaches to Reproductive Bioeconomies - I

Abstract

Egg freezing is both an infertility treatment for the fertile and a fertility treatment for the infertile. Younger, fertile women are freezing their eggs in preparation for future infertility in growing numbers, while frozen eggs enable the possibility of conception after the onset of age-related infertility. Through this double movement, categories and practices of fertility, infertility and what we may call “postfertility” are mobilized in new ways. This paper address how processes of financialization are at the heart of this step change in what it means to be fertile in the early 21st century.

Although egg freezing has received much scholarly attention, alongside extensive critical STS reflections on capital and technologized reproduction, the pivotal role of financialization in the fertility (preservation) sector remains understudied. This presentation first discusses the alignment of the key tenets of US equity investment, egg freezing companies’ business visions, and the reimagination of fertility. Second, it explores how the consolidation of equity-backed fertility companies through mergers and acquisitions dovetails with a move towards platformizing of fertility care, education and financing. Third, it considers the new financial instruments (insurance, subscription and guarantee plans) for covering egg freezing costs and analyzes the dynamics of investment and indebtedness through which postfertility is produced.

Set within an era of financialized capitalism, and amid an all-time high of US private equity investment (Dow Jones 2019), the financialization of fertility reconfigures the exchange of reproductive and capital value and propels a broader shift from ‘treating infertility’ towards ‘managing fertility’ in contemporary IVF.

Author

• Lucy van de Wiel, University of Cambridge