Fertility clinics can now offer women the ability to cryogenically preserve (freeze) their eggs so that later, if they wish to have a family, the egg can be thawed and fertilized. This process is not cheap. It costs about $10,000 for the initial freezing and then $500 per year thereafter for cryogenic storage. So it was rather surprising today when Facebook and Apple announced that they are going to start offering to pay for freezing their female employee's eggs. They wish to offer them this option in order to allow the women to put off having a family until later in life so that the employee can devote herself to her job.
This is not a new concept. For thousands of years the male eunuchs were considered the most prized servants and were often the trusted aides to kings. Eunuchs had no family or divided loyalties. They were able to offer their complete loyalty and time to the king. Jesus himself alluded to this practice in Matthew 19:12 when he said:
For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.
God prizes those who forsake their own family for the family of God. Of course, God offers eternal rewards.
For thus says the Lord: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. Isaiah 56:4-5
This brings a lot of questions to mind. Will women who choose not to freeze their eggs be viewed as less promotable because the company will not wish to invest in an employee who may wish to become pregnant and decide to leave to raise her child? Will this possibility put pressure on all women employees to have their eggs frozen? How late in life will the women wait to have a child from the frozen egg? While the woman who is older may be wiser, she also may be less healthy and vigorous and able to handle the hard work and stress of child-rearing. Of course, neither the career nor the family are guaranteed. Women who have their eggs frozen but have a mediocre career may regret their decision and resent the company for which they sacrificed a family.
And I think that it may not be only those who have a mediocre career. I believe that as the women age and begin to see that money and success are meaningless without a family to share it that they will regret their decision. And it is not just those who have had their eggs frozen. Modern birth control has produced a social subgroup of people who have forsaken a family for the ability to have a nicer car or a second home. As they approach death, they will do so without the comfort of a family. King Solomon said it many years ago in Ecclesiastes 4:7-8:
Again, I saw vanity under the sun: one person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, “For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?” This also is vanity and an unhappy business.
Perk Up: Facebook and Apple Now Pay for Women to Freeze Eggs
Two Silicon Valley giants now offer
women a game-changing perk: Apple and Facebook will pay for employees
to freeze their eggs.
Facebook recently began covering egg
freezing, and Apple will start in January, spokespeople for the
companies told NBC News. The firms appear to be the first major
employers to offer this coverage for non-medical reasons.
“Having a high-powered career and
children is still a very hard thing to do,” said Brigitte Adams, an
egg-freezing advocate and founder of the patient forum
Eggsurance.com. By offering this benefit, companies are investing in
women, she said, and supporting them in carving out the lives they
want.
When successful, egg freezing allows
women to put their fertility on ice, so to speak, until they’re
ready to become parents. But the procedure comes at a steep price:
Costs typically add up to at least $10,000 for every round, plus $500
or more annually for storage.
With notoriously male-dominated Silicon
Valley firms competing to attract top female talent, the coverage may
give Apple and Facebook a leg up among the many women who devote key
childbearing years to building careers. Covering egg freezing can be
viewed as a type of “payback” for women’s commitment, said
Philip Chenette, a fertility specialist in San Francisco.
The companies offer egg-freezing
coverage under slightly different terms: Apple covers costs under its
fertility benefit, and Facebook under its surrogacy benefit, both up
to $20,000. Women at Facebook began taking advantage of the coverage
this year.
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