Women, consider freezing your eggs

Marcia C. Inhorn at CNN:

Egg freezing is the newest reproductive technology: a recently perfected form of flash-freezing that allows human eggs to be successfully stored in egg banks. Only commercially available in American IVF clinics since October 2012, when the “experimental” label was lifted, egg freezing is being heralded as a “revolution in the way women age,” a “reproductive backstop,” a “fertility insurance policy,” an “egg savings account” and in particular, a way for ambitious career women to postpone motherhood until they are ready.

With egg freezing, women can use their own banked eggs later in life to effectively rewind their biological clock, becoming mothers in their 40s, 50s and beyond. It's a technological game changer that just might allow women to defy the notion that they can't have it all.

Trying to balance career and family is difficult for many professional women. I am one of those educated career-driven women who completed my Ph.D., found a good husband and landed my first tenure-track job at a major public university by 35.

But as my husband sometimes reminds me, I took only a single day of vacation during my first year on the job. I worked relentlessly to prepare lectures for four courses, to convert my dissertation into the mandatory book manuscript for tenure, and to advise the throngs of students coming to my office hours.

More here.