By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist

A new study has found that a majority of female medical students say they would be happy to store their eggs as insurance against later infertility.

Fox News is reporting that the study, conducted by researchers at the University of Leeds in northern England, surveyed 100 students with an average age of 21 and found that 85 percent of them were prepared to delay starting their family for career reasons. Of that number, 69 percent said they would have no qualms about freezing their eggs for later use.

“These results are not surprising, as professional women have long struggled under the double yoke of social pressure to become educated and financially self-sufficient, and the competing biological imperative to reproduce while still young,” said Srilatha Gorthi, who presented the study to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Rome.

“To date, very little research has been done towards establishing whether the concept and practicalities of egg freezing are acceptable to women considering delaying childbearing for social reasons. With the gradual and continual improvement of cryopreservation techniques comes an increased demand for these services,” she added.

Thus far, only a handful of women have actually gone through with the plan of freezing their eggs for social reasons, Fox reports.

According to Gorthi, the youngest woman to freeze eggs in her clinic was 28, and that it was most commonly requested by women in their late 30s, whose fertility had already started to decline.

Women pursuing careers in sports or education, who will not need as much time for training, were much less likely to consider the idea of freezing their eggs for future use.

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