No decisive objection to freezing egg cells

A woman who wishes to have a number of her eggs frozen because pregnancy does not fit it in with her career at the moment or because she has not yet met the ideal prospective father. The Academic Medical Centre (AMC) in Amsterdam has decided that these kinds of ‘social considerations’ are legitimate reasons to make this procedure technically possible for women who are not medically in need of such a procedure in order to have a baby.

Politicians, primarily of the confessional parties, are opposed to this development. That is significant because the Christian Democratic party (CDA), and sometimes other Christian parties as well, tend to play a dominant role in medical-ethical issues. In order to assert some leverage in these issues, they use the position of power that they can usually occupy when government coalitions are being formed. As a result, unlike in many other countries, the use of embryos ‘left over’ after IVF treatment for scientific research is prohibited in the Netherlands. That is lamentable since it stalls progress in the battle against illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, Down’s syndrome, diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

Opponents to such procedures with egg cells decry this so-called ‘wishful medicine': medicine should purely aim to heal illnesses. It is not a strong argument: breast augmentation and other plastic surgery, abortion, euthanasia, they are all in fact already accepted forms of ‘wishful medicine.’

A woman who has her egg cells frozen in order to use them at a later age is, in essence, doing much the same as a woman who takes the pill and stops at a certain moment when she wants to have children. Both cases involve some ‘tinkering’ with nature.

This development does raise certain questions however. The average age at which women are having children in the Netherlands is already high. Partly because of this, infant mortality in the Netherlands is high compared to other European countries. The chance of complications during birth are also higher among women of advanced maternal age.

Moreover, in honouring a woman’s desire to have a baby, perhaps a child’s 'desire for parents’ should also be considered, however difficult this may be to quantify. Is it wise for a woman aged 65 or older to have a child of school age? A question that could also be asked with regard to fathers. Thus we very soon enter the arena of individual consideration and responsibility, an area the government should better stay out of, if possible.

A government that wants to simulate young motherhood but also expects women to participate in the labour process and regularly break through a glass ceiling should be doing more to optimise child care outside the family. So that both parents can, if they wish, arrange their division of labour in the household and family in such a way that they can continue their careers without too much difficulty, under the motto that parenting is in principle a shared responsibility.

There is no decisive objection therefore to the AMC's plans to allow the freezing of egg cells for social reasons. Of course research must first demonstrate that the risks for mother and child are acceptable.

A question could be raised concerning the maximum age, 50 years, that the hospital has stipulated for the thawing and use of the egg cells by a prospective mother. It would be logical to bring this age more in line with the biological age constraint on motherhood. It should also be noted in advance that there is no reason for the costs of this ‘luxury’ procedure to be passed on to society in the form of mandatory [health care] premiums for the public.