Waiting for Mr Right is no reason to have your eggs frozen, IVF chiefs says

Career women should not be allowed to freeze their eggs to delay motherhood just because they have not yet found Mr Right, fertility experts said yesterday.

The procedure was introduced to give cancer patients, who risk being left infertile by treatment, the possibility of still having children later in life.

But up to a third of women who put motherhood on ice in Britain do so to delay having a family until it fits in with their hectic lifestyle.

At its meeting in Washington, the hugely-influential American Society for Reproductive Medicine has called for the practice to be limited to those with a valid medical reason for storing eggs.

It described egg freezing as "an experimental procedure that should not be offered or marketed as a means to defer reproductive ageing".

Dr Marc Fritz, of the society's practice committee, said women must be made aware that there is no guarantee of success.

The chances of a single defrosted egg producing a baby are as low as two per cent.

This means a woman would be better off having IVF with the eggs she produces at 35 than with "younger" eggs frozen ten years earlier, he said.

Ten clinics in Britain offer the procedure and just under 200 women have gone through with it.

Worldwide, around 550 "ice babies" have been born. In Britain, there have been four.

Experts have questioned the need to resort to such an extreme technique.

Drugs used to boost egg production can cause ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome - a potentially fatal condition - while the retrieval of eggs can be excruciatingly painful.

Josephine Quintavalle, of the campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: "Nobody should go through the invasive process of egg collection unless they have immediate fertility problems or are likely to loose future fertility as a result of treatments such as chemotherapy.

"The best solution to lifestyle problems is to change one's lifestyle."

But for Tessa Darley, a 37-year-old local government officer, having her eggs frozen was "liberating".

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Miss Darley, from Glasgow, paid £4,000 for the procedure, in which six of her eggs were successfully frozen. "I truly believe it will turn out to be a wonderful investment," she said.

"It means I don't have to worry that I will be too old for babies.

"I can devote time to my career, take my time finding Mr Right and know that when I deem the time is right, even if I am menopausal, I can still have my own baby."

Dr Gillian Lockwood, of Midland Fertility Services, the clinic behind all four British "ice babies", receives around ten inquiries a month about "social" egg freezing.

She added: "In an ideal world, society would make it possible for women to have babies at the age Mother Nature intended. But to penalise women for making life choices like this seems cruel and pointless.

"Many of those women have been with commitment-phobic men or have not found Mr Right, or they are part of a couple that needs two salaries to get a mortgage."

Dr Lockwood said: "The vast majority who come to me long to have a baby in the old-fashioned way and it's all champagne and roses. It's certainly not the case that these are mad Alpha-females."

She added: "I probably dissuade or turn away more women than I treat on grounds that they have unrealistic expectations or that their chance of success is too low.

"As long as women know it's not an insurance policy or a guarantee, then it remains an option they may wish to pursue."