For those of you that have followed my blog from the start, you will know the reason I started writing followed my decision almost three a half years ago to freeze my eggs. Something that I have talked about at length, but also something I have tried to move on from……… as much as any women can move on from her own fertility story!
Today, at the beginning of National Fertility Awareness Week, the Progress Educational Trust (PET) is launching #ExtendTheLimit, a campaign to extend the 10-year storage limit on eggs frozen for non-medical (media please stop calling this social, there’s nothing social about it!) reasons. The trust states, ‘If a woman wants to try to preserve her fertility, the best time to freeze her eggs is in her 20s but, under current UK law, women who freeze their eggs for non-medical reasons can only store them for 10 years.
I know at 38 I’m not the best example, as there may be readers that can’t understand why anyone would want to start a family at 48, but surely the point is, this isn’t a debate about the age of conception/raising a child, this is about a women’s right to choose. And if everyone thinks about this logically, how can anyone object to a woman that freezes their eggs at 25, even 35 or beyond, using their eggs 10+ years later. I don’t know what the future is for my own fertility, but I do know one thing for sure, I, like many, would like the option to choose.
As Dr Kylie Baldwin, rightly points out in her recent Huff Post article ‘Women can currently use donor eggs to conceive with no legal age limit in the UK on this procedure (although many clinics will not provide the treatment to women over 50).’ So this law surrounding egg freezing seems somewhat outdated and very unfair.
It would be fantastic if you can help by signing and sharing the petition to raise awareness and call for a change to this law!
