Take That, Mr. Smug Sperm

By LENORE SKENAZY
December 19, 2007

Ah, the romance of the Christmas Eve dance. Jewish singles mingle, tingle. Eyes meet. Sparks fly. And in the midst of this whirling swirl of hope, let us pause for a gentle plug for egg-freezing, brought to you by your friendly fertility clinic.

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Gianna Rose Atelier

Egg-shaped bars of soap.

Attendees at the 21st annual Matzo Ball here in New York will find it sponsored by Extend Fertility, a company that proposes to do exactly what its name says — extend a woman's fertile years freezing her eggs for use at some later date.

"Date" being the operative word. Once a gal knows her eggs can last longer than a box of broccoli, she can date without the old ovary-centric worries. She could, God forbid, attend another 10 Matzo Balls and never have to listen to her biological clock. Or mother.

"I have a few clients like this," the founder of Shoshanna's Matches, Shoshanna Rikon, said, referring to women who have frozen their eggs, "and I love them. You know why? Because there's not as much of an air of desperation coming from them."

A 37-year-old Extend Fertility client who preferred not to use her name is one of this new breed. Finding herself without the right guy — yet — the Manhattan architect froze her eggs earlier this year. It took a month of shots and about $10,000, but she says it was worth it. "I have a close male friend I almost felt like killing after hearing him say, 'You guys, your biological clock is ticking. You better get someone now, even if he's short and ugly, because your eggs aren't good,'" she recalled, still seething. "But I have good eggs now in the bank."

Take that, Mr. Smug Sperm.

"It does kind of level the playing field between men and women," the director of the New York University Fertility Center, Dr. James Grifo, said. But that doesn't mean it always works. The technique is only about 5 years old and has so far resulted in fewer than a thousand babies.

Still, it's coming along. In a study conducted by Dr. Grifo (who is not affiliated with Extend Fertility), half the women using thawed eggs had babies, which is pretty much the same rate as women using traditional in vitro fertilization procedures. This makes it a real option, if hardly a guarantee.

In fact, right now about the only thing it's guaranteeing is controversy, because in its own way, egg freezing is as radical as The Pill. The Pill allowed women to act like, well, men by taking away the old biological consequence: fertility. Egg freezing lets women keep acting like men by eliminating the other biological consequence: infertility.

"'I' am not ready to have children, 'I' must work on developing my career … 'I' will cheat the fertility clock by using the advantages science gave me," sneered a typical editorial, this one in the Irish Examiner, disgusted by such female freedom.

But "I" could not imagine not using science to my advantage if I wanted to have a baby but wasn't quite ready. And frankly, that's the situation of a lot of women here in hard-driving New York.

"Three of my friends are 40 or 41 and they tell me that they wish they had done this," a 33-year-old Extend client, medical sales rep Lucia Vazquez, said.

When and if the procedure becomes more common, it could turn the social scene upside down. Women might actually relax as they approached 40. Men might actually date them.

With any luck, of course, that's exactly what will happen on Christmas Eve. The 1,500 Matzo Ball revelers will all fall in love, marry, and mate before a single egg calls it quits.

If not, at least the women will leave with a little door prize from the sponsor: An egg-shaped bar of soap. Tacky, perhaps, but it beats an alarm clock.

Hear the "Lenore Galore" podcast:

Download the mp3 file

lskenazy@yahoo.com