Western nations face a “silent epidemic” of infertility, according to reproductive health specialist Dr. Helen O’Neill, who has sounded the alarm bell against leftist tech corporations like Facebook and LinkedIn offering to freeze female employees’ eggs so they can focus on work.
“Some companies will pay £27,000 per employee for fertility treatment. There is a subtle underlying message that by choosing not to freeze your eggs, you are either being careless or not prioritizing your career,” she said. “Instead, why wouldn’t workplaces say to a woman in their twenties or thirties, ‘We’re here to support you and make sure you do not fall into the trap of needing fertility treatment’?”
Bloomberg Businessweek infamously ran a cover story on tech marketer Brigitte Adams under the headline “freeze your eggs, free your career” after she spent $19,000 on the procedure in 2014. It was reported in 2021 that all of these eggs failed when she tried to use them, leaving her screaming like “a wild animal”.
How it started How it’s going pic.twitter.com/QEjFZrcQwy
— Michael Foster (@thisisfoster) March 19, 2021
Dr. O’Neill, who runs an at-home hormone-testing company for women concerned about their fertility, said she was faced with “the devastating graph that shows ovarian reserve — the number of eggs — decline so dramatically over time, with the sharpest drop being after 30” on a “daily basis” in her own work.
“I remember staring at it at a conference, counting the years ahead of me [and] thinking, I’m not in a relationship, I need to find someone, I need to be going out with them for a normal enough amount of time so we can procreate together. It felt so unfair,” she recalled.
Men are also increasingly facing fertility issues in the modern world, however, due a dramatic and accelerating drop in sperm counts.
All told, one in six couples now face fertility issues.
