RHEA (Research Centre Gender, Diversity and Intersectionality), Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium.
Centre for Health and Society, Department of Sociology and Policy, Aston University, B4 7ET, Birmingham, UK.
Monash Bioeth Rev. 2022 Dec;40(2):145-156. doi: 10.1007/s40592-022-00153-9. Epub 2022 Mar 20.
While the literature on oncofertility decision-making was central to the bioethics debate on social egg freezing when the practice emerged in the late 2000s, there has been little discussion juxtaposing the two forms of egg freezing since. This article offers a new perspective on this debate by comparing empirical qualitative data of two previously conducted studies on medical and social egg freezing. We re-analysed the interview data of the two studies and did a thematic analysis combined with interdisciplinary collaborative auditing for empirical ethics projects. Despite their different contexts, major similarities in women's decision-making and reasoning were found. We developed two main common themes. Firstly, women felt a clear need to plan for future options. Secondly, they manipulated decision-times by postponing definitive decisions and making micro-decisions. The comparison highlights that the passage of time and the preservation of future choice seems to permeate all aspects of the patient experiences in both studies. As a result of considering real-world lived experiences, we suggest that there are many overlaps in women's reasoning about egg freezing regardless of why they are making a decision to freeze. These overlaps are morally relevant and thus need to be further integrated into the existing arguments that have been canvassed in the flourishing egg freezing and fertility preservation debates across the field, and in policy and practice globally.
虽然 21 世纪末，当社会层面的卵子冷冻技术出现时，有关肿瘤生育力决策的文献成为生育伦理讨论的核心，但此后很少有文献将这两种卵子冷冻形式并列讨论。本文通过比较两项关于医学和社会层面卵子冷冻的先前研究的实证定性数据，为这一争论提供了一个新视角。我们重新分析了这两项研究的访谈数据，并对其进行了主题分析，同时对实证伦理项目进行了跨学科协作审计。尽管这两项研究的背景不同，但女性在决策和推理方面存在很大的相似之处。我们得出了两个主要的共同主题。首先，女性感到有明确的需求来规划未来的选择。其次，她们通过推迟明确的决定和做出微观决策来操纵决策时间。这种比较凸显了时间的流逝和未来选择的保留似乎渗透到了两项研究中患者经历的各个方面。通过考虑现实生活中的经验，我们认为，无论女性为何决定冷冻卵子，她们在考虑卵子冷冻时的推理有许多重叠之处。这些重叠在道德上是相关的，因此需要进一步纳入该领域中蓬勃发展的卵子冷冻和生育力保存辩论以及全球政策和实践中已经提出的现有论点。
