Egg freezing has become a viable option for younger women who want to delay having children, says IVF specialist Gillian Lockwood in the journal Reproductive Biomedicine (subscription required). Because of “Social, educational, emotional and financial pressures” many women are not ready for child-bearing until their late 30s, when their fertility has already declined significantly. But “freezing a woman’s eggs at age 30 literally ‘freezes in time’ her fertility potential and gives her the chance of a healthy pregnancy at a time of her choosing.”

Dr Lockwood, the spokesperson on ethics for the British Fertility Society, argues that three technological developments have made this possible: intracytoplasmic sperm injection, dehydro-cryoprotectants and vitrification. She claims that “now young women who have cryopreserved eggs can be offered the same chance of a live birth per embryo transfer as women undergoing conventional IVF treatment.”