Most women who freeze their eggs for later use to remove the pressure to find Mr Right, and to preserve their fertility would consider using them to become single mothers. A study of patients who have had their eggs frozen at an IVF clinic in New York suggests that 80 per cent would think about having them fertilised with donor sperm if they failed to find a suitable partner.
Many of the women, all of whom were childless and single, said they had decided to keep some eggs on ice to “take the pressure off” their search for a man to father their children. If they never found him, their stored eggs would give them a better chance of motherhood.
Advances in freezing will revolutionise IVF by allowing women to store “young” eggs when they are in their twenties and thirties . Using young eggs in IVF improves the chance of success and reduces the risk to the baby. Experience with the technique has advanced most rapidly in Italy. In England, the law was changed in 2000 to allow clinics to store eggs by freezing them.
The researchers found that 40per cent of the women were definitely prepared to become single parents using their frozen eggs; another 40 per cent were still thinking about it. Only 20 per cent said that they would not consider having them fertilised without a partner.