Egg freezing offers women options

She knew she wanted to be a mom, so it was a big shock to Tina Rampino when her gynecologist told her she was running out of time to have kids. 

Egg freezing was not yet common and it wasn’t covered by her insurance, but Rampino, then 35, took a leap of faith, which at the time she considered to be her backup plan. She’s now a 46-year-old single mother by choice of two little boys, thanks to egg freezing. 

“On the day that I started my egg-freezing cycle, I screenshotted a quote that said, ‘Do something today that your future self will thank you for,'” Rampino said. “And that is something that I think about all the time because that really was the decision that changed my life.”

Rising number of women turning to egg freezing 

Freezing embryos for in vitro fertilization, IVF, has been possible for decades, but freezing unfertilized eggs was a tougher scientific challenge. It was initially used for patients with cancer and other conditions that threatened fertility. 

Egg freezing for non-medical reasons became an accepted practice 12 years ago, and since then, demand has skyrocketed, with hundreds of thousands of eggs now frozen. The number of egg freezing procedures increased more than six times over, from 6,000 in 2014, to more than 39,000 in 2023.

Women who’ve chosen to freeze their eggs told 60 Minutes they want to increase the chances of having a baby when they’re older.  They said having eggs frozen meant they didn’t need to rush to find partners, and didn’t need to obsess over the ticking of their biological clocks.

Younger and younger women are beginning to freeze their eggs, according to Dr. Tomer Singer, head of Northwell Health’s fertility practice. When he started doing egg freezing in 2012, most of the women he treated were in their early 40s. Now most of his patients are in their late 20s or early 30s.

Kate Sonderegger froze her eggs at the unusually young age of 22 because she’s going to medical school and knows she has a long journey ahead of her. 

“You know, education for four years, training for anywhere from four to seven years after that,” she said. “I’m not even going to think about building a family personally until after I’m done with all of that.”

A 2022 study from one large fertility center found that 70% of women who froze at least 20 eggs before the age of 38 had a baby, but success rates dropped off considerably the older women were and the fewer eggs they froze. So some women, including Carissa Simek, have had their eggs retrieved and frozen more than once as a way to bank more eggs. 

She did two cycles of egg freezing when she was 34.

From eggs to embryos to babies

Lynsy Smithson-Stanley froze her eggs at 35, paying out of pocket. She was single at the time, but got engaged a few years later to Paul Fletcher. They want children, but not until they’re married.

The couple also wants to wait until Smithson-Stanley finishes her doctorate. So Dr. Singer recommended they thaw Smithson-Stanley’s 18 frozen eggs, fertilize them with Fletcher’s sperm, and then do genetic testing to assess viability, which is possible once fertilized eggs grow into 5- to 7-day-old embryos. The results: the couple has four chromosomally normal embryos on ice waiting for them.

“We have two boys and two girls,” Smithson-Stanley said.

Rampino, the woman whose gynecologist told her she was running out of time to have kids, used a sperm donor to fertilize her eggs. She was 35 when she froze them and 40 when she had them fertilized. 

The first embryo from her frozen eggs failed to implant, but a second embryo implanted successfully. 

Rampino gave birth to a son, Christopher, in 2023

“He’s such a happy, healthy boy,” Rampino said. “He’s so playful, he loves people.”

Rampino gave birth to a second boy, Theo, in July, using the final embryo from her frozen eggs. 

The future of egg freezing 

Singer believes that, one day, when it’s more affordable and covered more frequently by insurance, almost all young women will freeze their eggs as a matter of routine. 

“I’m a big believer that egg freezing, and IVF, is gonna be the way our next generation will expand. I think that having timed intercourse, or unprotected intercourse for reproduction is gonna be falling out of favor in the next generation or so,” he said. 

Singer foresees things being very different when his young children grow up. “I’m sure my 2-year-old will ask me, ‘Mom, Dad, you had unprotected intercourse? What about chromosomal abnormalities, miscarriages, twins? What were you doing? Russian Roulette?” he said.

Still, there are critics who caution that egg freezing does not guarantee that a woman will be able to have a child. 

Women 60 Minutes spoke with say there needs to be more education about egg freezing and fertility. They believe that gynecologists should be having these conversations with women when they’re younger. Dr. Lucky Sekhon, a fertility specialist at RMA of New York, agreed that gynecologists should introduce the subject to patients, while navigating the topic carefully given its sensitive nature.

“You don’t want to be judgmental,” she said. “Not everyone has to freeze their eggs. Not everyone has to have children. But everyone should take the moment to consider their options and really think about what they want.”