Increasing numbers of women are choosing to freeze their eggs in the hope that years down the line they can use these younger, healthier eggs to have children once their relationship, personal, financial or work circumstances are right. And fertility clinics and employers are increasingly pushing women to consider this option as a ‘normal’ part of life, while a culture war backlash from the political and social right is also well underway. But how on earth should we as Christians think about the practice of so-called social egg freezing, which has shot up eightfold in the last decade alone? Is it prudent and necessary to ensure women can play a full part in the workplace? Or a denial of our created reality, and a dangerous use of technology to selfishly pursue our own desires? Can we retain the huge benefits of the feminist revolution of the last century while also ordering our lives and fertility how God intended, without invasive technological ‘fixes’?
- A helpful Nuffield Council on Bioethics briefing paper
- The New York Times’s research into differing maternal age at first birth across the United States
In each episode of Matters of Life and Death, brought to you by Premier Unbelievable?, John Wyatt and his son Tim discuss issues in healthcare, ethics, technology, science, faith and more. John is a doctor, professor of ethics, and writer and speaker on many of these topics, while Tim is a religion and social affairs journalist. We talk about how Christians can better engage with a particular question of life, death or something else in between.
Increasing numbers of women are choosing to freeze their eggs in the hope that years down the line they can use these younger, healthier eggs to have children once their relationship, personal, financial or work circumstances are right. And fertility clinics and employers are increasingly pushing women to consider this option as a ‘normal’ part of life, while a culture war backlash from the political and social right is also well underway. But how on earth should we as Christians think about the practice of so-called social egg freezing, which has shot up eightfold in the last decade alone? Is it prudent and necessary to ensure women can play a full part in the workplace? Or a denial of our created reality, and a dangerous use of technology to selfishly pursue our own desires? Can we retain the huge benefits of the feminist revolution of the last century while also ordering our lives and fertility how God intended, without invasive technological ‘fixes’?
• A helpful Nuffield Council on Bioethics briefing paper https://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/publications/egg-freezing-in-the-uk/introduction
• The New York Times’s research into differing maternal age at first birth across the United States https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/04/upshot/up-birth-age-gap.html
• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John’s website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com