Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Ladies: Give Us Your Most Productive Years, We’ll Hold Your Eggs For You
Ladies: Give Us Your Most Productive Years, We’ll Hold Your Eggs For You
Apr 9, 2025 1:59 AM

This story has so many things wrong with it, I hardly know where to start. Apple and Facebook have both announced that will now offer egg-freezing – for non-medical purposes – for their employees (which runs at least $10,000, plus a $500 to $800 annual storage fee.)

For panies, it means two things. One, there is a demand from their employees for such an offer. Second, panies themselves see some benefit to this. What it sounds like is this: “It’s really not practical or productive for people to try to both work and parent during the ages when they’ll be most useful as a worker, so let’s just take care of that issue. Work, work, work…try and e a parent later.”

Here are facts about egg-freezing:

In order to retrieve eggs for freezing, a patient undergoes the same hormone-injection process as in-vitro fertilization. The only difference is that following egg retrieval, they are frozen for a period of time before they are thawed, fertilized and transferred to the uterus as embryos.

It takes approximately 4-6 weeks plete the egg freezing cycle and is consistent with the initial stages of the IVF process including:

2-4 weeks of self-administered hormone injections and birth control pills to temporarily turn off natural hormones (this step can be skipped if there is urgency, such as prior to cancer therapy).

10-14 days of hormone injections to stimulate the ovaries and ripen multiple eggs.

Once the eggs have adequately matured, they are removed with a needle placed through the vagina under ultrasound guidance. This procedure is done under intravenous sedation and is not painful. The eggs are then immediately frozen. When the patient is ready to attempt pregnancy (this can be several years later)the eggs are thawed, injected with a single sperm to achieve fertilization, and transferred to the uterus as embryos.

Does it work? Depends on how old the woman is when her eggs are frozen, when the eggs are retrieved, and then there’s the issue of fertilized eggs (or what many of us call human beings) that don’t get “used.”

It all just seems a little…creepy, and frankly, very unfriendly towards women. “Give us the most productive years of your life, work-wise; we’ll hold onto your eggs for you.” Never mind that these are the same years when women are biologically-oriented to wanting to have children. Nope, es first. “We’ll take care of that whole work-family balance thing. Go ahead and give us 12-hour days.” Seems a bit like indentured servitude. “Work for us for X amount of years and we’ll reward you with your own eggs for your semi-retirement.”

Mackenzie Dawson at the New York Post is certainly uneasy about this.

It is all this work that makes it hard for so many Americans to pursue meaningful personal lives in the first place.

Until we address the national problem of overwork, these types of perks are just symbolic window dressing.

Relationships don’t just magically happen after you check off all your other goals. Life is messy.

Then there is this ethical objection from Ronald Bailey that:

…centers on claims that this technique furthers the medicalization mercialization of women’s bodies. Of course, it is women who are choosing voluntarily to take advantage of this technology. They must believe that it can benefit them and further the development of their life plans.

Children are not “convenient.” They do not know how to follow schedules, nor do they understand a parent’s job. They are demanding, needy, wholly dependent beings. It alarms me that both people and corporations believe that a child and a family is something to be “fit into” a career, a life plan, a schedule, a corporate policy. One doesn’t schedule children in the same way one schedules a holiday or summer vacation. Kids get fevers, throw up at school, break their legs playing football. They want a parent to show up for their band concert, dance recital and hockey play-off. They don’t care about meetings, deadlines and business trips.

If a parent or pany thinks that children are to be conveniently planned and scheduled around work, I worry for the child, the family, and the culture that will create.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
When Religious Liberty Disappears, Who Remains Behind?
While you’re munching on hot dogs, chasing the kids around the yard with a Super Soaker and generally enjoying a 3-day weekend benefit of the Founding Fathers, remind yourself (at least once) what a gift religious liberty is. Come Friday night, Saturday or Sunday morning, you can (or not!) go to the mosque, synagogue or church of your choice and peacefully enjoy the service. You can sit and be a vaguely interested participant or you can go full-throttle with song...
TGC Offers Free Rental of ‘For the Life of the World’
“What is our salvation actually for?” This is the question at the center of For the Life of the World: Letters to the Exiles, a 7-part series from the Acton Institute that seeks to examine the bigger picture of Christianity’s role in culture, society, and the world. Each Monday — from July 7 to August 18 — The Gospel Coalition (TGC) is highlighting one episode and sharing an exclusive code for for a free 72-hour rental of the full episode:...
Socially-Conscious Businesses And The ‘Dirty 100’
There is pany in the U.S. that those who want businesses to be more socially-conscious should love. pany starts employees out at $15/hour, far higher than the minimum wage. Raises have been given throughout even the harshest of economic downturn. Employees always get Sundays off. There’s another group that could easily be called socially-conscious. These folks take care of the neediest elderly people, any race or religion, regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay. Despite the business practices...
The Economic Legacy of World War I
The Great War began 100 years ago last week. From an economic perspective (from Pulitzer Prize economist Liaquat Ahamed) the European nations paid for WWI not with taxes, but with massive debts financed largely by America. The warring nations could not pay their way out of debt so many resorted to the easier route: inflation. But that inflation destroyed the savings of the middle class and that did not make European nations more stable. Germany finally defaulted on its war...
Reclaiming the Honor of Craftsmanship
As economic prosperity has increased, and as the American economy has transitioned from agrarian to industrial to information-driven, manual labor has been increasingly cast down in the popular imagination. When our youth navigate and graduate from high school, they receive pressure from all directions to excel in particular areas and attend a four-year college, typically in pursuit of “white-collar” work. The trades, on the other hand — including brickmasons, plumbers, butchers, and carpenters — are not high on the minds...
Why Bootleggers and Baptists Align on Regulation
“Politics makes strange bedfellows,” said Charles Dudley Warner. And nowhere is that more true than in the political alliances that form around regulation. In a 1983 paper, regulatory economist Bruce Yandle coined the catch-phrase “Bootleggers and Baptists” for the observation that regulations are often supported by peculiar alliances who have very different end-goals in mind. Yandle explains the Bootleggers and Baptists theory of regulation in this video by LearnLiberty. (Via: Art Carden) ...
The Declaration of Independence reminds us to put tyrants on notice
Perhaps the most enduring legacy of the Declaration of Independence is that it sought to overturn the long abuses and powers of tyrants. It revealed the truth of self-government and that power is inherent in the people. In the second introduction of the document, Jefferson declared: …That whenever any Form of Government es destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such...
John Milton’s Anthropology of Liberty
Today’s edition of Prufrock (subscribe here!) notes the ing release of Paul Hammond,Milton and the People (Oxford, July 29): Who are ‘the people’ in Milton’s writing? They figure prominently in his texts from early youth to late maturity, in his poetry and in his prose works; they are invoked as the sovereign power in the state and have the right to overthrow tyrants; they are also, as God’s chosen people, the guardians of the true Protestant path against those who...
Destruction of Biblical History Continues In Iraq
The treasures of Iraq have been repeatedly looted. Historical and artistic artifacts that span centuries are gone – obliterated. And the mess continues. Iraqi National Museum Director Qais Hussein Rashid says his staff cannot withstand terrorist strikes or take preventative measures. Terrorists, of course, are not interested in hanging tapestries on their walls; they use these artifacts as e. Known as ISIS or ISIL, the terrorists have proclaimed themselves a new caliphate or kingdom. We as Iraqis are incapable of...
Beware of Self-Willed Religion
Last week, I wrote about the danger of self-chosen sacrifice, channeling evangelist Oswald Chambers, who warns us to “never decide the place of your own martyrdom.” “Always guard against self-chosen service for God,” he continues. “Self-sacrifice may be a disease that impairs your service.” As an example of how the process ought to go, Chambers looks to the story of Abraham and Isaac. God demanded something quite peculiar —the sacrifice of Abraham’s son —and Abraham simply obeyed.“God chose the test...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved