Eggs on Ice: Imaginaries of Eggs and Cryopreservation in Denmark

Abstract

While Denmark is widely known as a global exporter of cryopreserved sperm, Danish women’s eggs face a very different fate. This paper combines legal and rhetorical analyses with the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries. In establishing the genealogy of the sociotechnical imaginaries that shaped Danish regulation of the cryopreservation of eggs, we analyse the relevant Acts, Bills, preparatory work, and readings in Parliament, along with the concurrent public and ethical debates that over time relaxed the legal limit for the cryopreservation of eggs to the current five years and today continue to ignite discussions on elective egg freezing. We rely on welfare-state perspectives to discuss why reproduction, in the Danish context, is seen as a legitimate and appropriate sphere to regulate, and we turn to feminist theorizing to discuss the gendered implications captured in the sociotechnical imaginaries of the “Moral State”, “technologies to be tamed”, “the nuclear family”, and “technology as equality and hope”. We end by discussing how an interdisciplinary approach enriches our understanding of the legal, cultural, and political entanglements related to putting eggs on ice.

Keywords:

• Cryopreservation
• sociotechnical imaginaries
• egg freezing
• reproduction
• Danish law

Notes

1. The video Do it for Denmark can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrO3TfJc9Qw Retrieved October 2017.

2. Cura Öresund markets its services specifically to Danish women on its website: http://www.ivfkliniken.se/curaoresund/behandling_2012/nedfrysning-af-aeg/ Retrieved October, 2017.

3. http://webarkiv.ft.dk/?/samling/19931/udvbilag/suu/almdel_bilag63.htm. Document is not electronically available, but made available to the authors courtesy of the Parliamentary Library.

4. http://webarkiv.ft.dk/?/samling/19931/udvbilag/suu/almdel_bilag137.htm. Document is not electronically available, but made available to the authors courtesy of the Parliamentary Library.

5. Debate on Bill No. 200 of 23 February 1995 printed in Folketingets Forhandlinger p. 4055 http://webarkiv.ft.dk/?/samling/19951/lovforslag_oversigtsformat/l200.htm

6. See also the Health Minister’s speech during the first parliamentary debate http://www.ft.dk/samling/20051/lovforslag/l151/beh1-48/81/forhandling.htm?startItem=#nav

7. Kvinder fryser sig til sen graviditet. Derfor frosser yngre kvinder æg ned, mens de venter på drømmeprinsen [Women freeze to have a late pregnancy. These are the reasons why younger women freeze while they await the prince of their dreams]. 24 timer, 28 June 2010.