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“It gives me time, but does it give me freedom?”: a contextual understanding of anticipatory decision-making in social egg freezing

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Abstract

The ethics of social egg freezing is a much-debated topic, yet there is limited research using contextual approaches to understand the experiences and decision-making of women that have used this novel assisted reproductive technology. Based on a small-scale qualitative study in Belgium, this article explores how women’s social contexts have an impact on conceptions of time and anticipatory decision-making in relation to social egg freezing. We describe three recurrent themes that we identified in our qualitative study: waiting for the right time, planning and manipulating future time, and ambivalence through medical anticipation. Inspired by the analytical framework of Pierre Bourdieu, we discuss how social egg freezing generates a kind of biocapital for higher educated women within current neoliberal societies. The article also illustrates how women’s decisions are accompanied by feelings of ambivalence, and lasting mismatches between subjective expectations and structural tendencies in the fields of intimate relations, work, and medicine. As such the article contributes to a contextual understanding of normative issues concerning social egg freezing, in particular those related to questions of autonomy.

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Funding

Funding was provided by FWO (Grant no. 1166119).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. RHEA (Research Centre Gender, Diversity and Intersectionality), Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

    Michiel De Proost & Gily Coene

  2. Bioethics Institute Ghent, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Michiel De Proost

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  1. Michiel De Proost
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Correspondence to Michiel De Proost.

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We confirm that the manuscript is comprised of original material that is not under review elsewhere, and that the study on which the research is based has been subject to appropriate ethical review by the Medical Ethics Committee of the University Hospital Brussels (Registration number: 143201837625) and Ghent University Hospital (Registration number: 670201940623).

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De Proost, M., Coene, G. “It gives me time, but does it give me freedom?”: a contextual understanding of anticipatory decision-making in social egg freezing. BioSocieties 19, 112–129 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-022-00297-1

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