00:00Science has made immense progress in allowing motherhood to be extended without harming parallel life plans.
00:06of those who want a child.
00:07A woman may want to have children, but not now.
00:09She may be studying, building a career, seeking financial stability, single, or simply going through a phase where the
00:17Motherhood is not yet in her plans.
00:19While she feels ready to make that decision, there are now alternatives.
00:23Let's talk about egg freezing, a practice that has been used in reproductive medicine for several years.
00:28and that little by little it is beginning to appear as an alternative for women who want to have children later on and
00:33at the same time advance in other life projects.
00:36In August 2026, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, a US congresswoman, publicly stated that she had begun the process of freezing her assets.
00:43their hubules.
00:44Her decision opened a conversation about a situation that many women experience,
00:48how to organize motherhood within a life that also includes work, studies, relationships and
00:54personal decisions.
00:55The discussion doesn't stop with public figures either.
00:58In the United States, a national study found that patients who underwent planned freezing of brain cells
01:04They went from 4,153 in 2014 to 16,436 in 2021.
01:09What are they looking for when they make that decision?
01:11According to Jenny Das Champs, doctor and fertility coordinator at Profamilia,
01:15Egg freezing can open a window for women who want to preserve the possibility of becoming mothers.
01:20while they advance in their professional and personal projects.
01:23Reason has a direct relationship with time.
01:26Female fertility changes with age, and even though a woman may feel she is in the best moment of her life
01:31Whether for work, study, travel, or building a relationship, their eggs follow a different biological process.
01:37The procedure allows intervention at that point.
01:40First, the ovaries are stimulated to obtain several eggs, then they are extracted and subjected to vitrification.
01:45a rapid freezing technique that allows them to be preserved.
01:48If years later the woman decides to use them, they can be thawed and fertilized through assisted reproduction.
01:54And there's another detail: once vitrified, the eggs can remain stored for years.
02:00The available evidence does not indicate that the simple passage of time in storage
02:03have the same effect as the aging of the body on the quality of the eggs.
02:08For decades, contraceptive methods allowed women to separate sexuality from motherhood,
02:13because pleasure ceased to be seen solely for reproductive purposes.
02:17That changed the way millions of women were able to study, work, and make decisions about their lives.
02:22But egg freezing raises another possibility,
02:25to separate to some extent the moment when a woman wants to have a child
02:29from the moment when it has the greatest biological chance of doing so.
02:32And here are two scenarios.
02:34The first provides a window of time to build life projects
02:37who combine motherhood and professional growth,
02:40But it has also been used as a strategy by some governments
02:44to blame them for a birth rate that has fallen in almost every part of the world.
02:49In other words, they offer freezing but do not resolve the doubts a woman has before becoming a mother.
02:54And there is something that drives the entire discussion.
02:57The silver.
02:58In Colombia, when freezing is for non-medical reasons,
03:01It is usually done in the private sector.
03:03Some clinics offer cycles that exceed 10 million pesos,
03:07which may include medications, storage, and other procedures.
03:11That puts a pretty concrete limit on the possibility, which is money.
03:15A woman with sufficient income may consider paying to preserve her eggs.
03:19and extend the time to make a decision.
03:22For others, the procedure may be completely beyond their reach.
03:26And there is another discussion behind the procedure.
03:28Motherhood continues to have different employment and economic consequences for men and women.
03:32Pregnancy, postpartum, and caregiving responsibilities can affect your income.
03:37their chances of advancement and the time available to develop a career.
03:41In many households, women continue to shoulder a greater share of domestic and care work.
03:47Therefore, egg freezing can be interpreted from two different perspectives.
03:51For a woman, it can be a tool that allows her to make a decision with greater peace of mind.
03:56But it can also appear as an individual response to difficulties that have a much broader origin.
04:01The conclusion is not easy, but it is not the same for everyone either.
04:04There will be women who freeze their eggs because they want to.
04:07Others will do it because they don't want to be mothers yet, but they also don't want to close that door.
04:11Some may do so for medical reasons, and there will be those who simply do not want to have children.
04:17But the good news is that there is a medical procedure that, despite its drawbacks,
04:20It is offering a certain freedom and autonomy to women who did not have it before.
04:24What do you think about this procedure?
04:26We invite you to read us on all Impacto Mujer channels and social media.
04:30The Equalizations and The Spectator.
