By now you may have read Emma Rosenblum’s cover story in Bloomberg’s Businessweek called, “Later, Baby: Will Freezing Your Eggs Free Your Career?” Despite its sensational but admittedly eye-catching title, Rosenblum’s article was excellent. However, I would like to emphasize three important points that were not mentioned:

1. Women who decide to freeze their eggs should be careful when choosing a fertility clinic in which to do so. Marketing efforts around egg freezing can be quite aggressive, especially in large urban centers where it is most common. Surprisingly, some fertility clinics are still using the “slow freeze” method of freezing eggs. And even in clinics that are using advanced vitrification techniques, many cannot point to a statistically significant track record of successfully thawing frozen eggs, creating embryos with them, and then conducting transfers that have resulted in the birth of a baby. Women considering freezing their eggs ought to think of themselves as “consumers” who have a right to ask physicians penetrating questions and who are entitled to receive meaningful answers.

2. Women who freeze their eggs must be careful not to allow the fact that they have done so to distort their decision-making processes in a way that can have a long term negative impact on how their lives unfold. Frozen eggs represent the hope of a baby rather than a 100% guarantee of a baby. In making choices about how to conduct their lives after freezing their eggs, women ought to thoughtfully consider how they will feel if their frozen eggs do not result in a child.

3. Having a baby via egg freezing is, in actual fact, even more financially prohibitive than Rosenblum’s piece acknowledged. The cost does not end with the egg freezing process. Once a woman is ready to attempt pregnancy with her frozen eggs there are still the considerable costs associated with the remainder of the IVF process, such as, among other things, thawing the eggs, creating and cultivating embryos in the laboratory, and transferring an embryo or embryos into the woman’s uterus.

I have a front row seat to the immeasurable heartache and despair felt by women who are unable to become pregnant because of their advanced age. It is no doubt because I view egg freezing through that lens that I am wholeheartedly in favour of it. Besides, anything that broadens women’s reproductive options has to be a good thing. However, decisions related to egg freezing require careful navigation. In addition, it is unfortunately a door that is closed to those without significant financial means.