Current Research Project
Sara is currently in charge of the Subproject 2: "Postponing Pregnancy, Extending Fertility" within the CRYOSOCITIES project.
Cryopreservation plays a fundamental role in assisted reproduction
today, as it allows the store and easily transport of sperm, embryos and
eggs. This preservation of reproductive capacity through time (and
across space) constitutes an essential characteristic of cryobanking and
Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs). While sperm has been
cryopreserved successfully for a long time, it was only very recently
that oocytes became cryopreservable with similar success rates through
vitrification, making their freezing a widespread option. Freezing of
oocytes was initially offered to women facing cancer treatment or other
fertility-impairing conditions. Today it is increasingly being used for
so-called non-medical or social reasons: women freezing their eggs to
extend their fertility potentiality over time. The novelty of the
“social use” of this technology urgently calls for empirical study.
The ethnographic study of egg freezing for the CRYOSOCIETIES project
will focus on Spain. This country has emerged as one of the main
reproductive hubs in Europe and internationally in the last years. The
subproject will study the reasoning behind women’s decisions to store
their eggs as well as the role oocyte cryopreservation plays within the
clinics studied and the broader reproductive sector. Our aim is to see
how practices of egg freezing are linked to certain ways of thinking and
enacting time, working and family life cycles: how do considerations
behind freezing eggs connect to broader socio-political rationalities?
How does egg freezing redifine (in)fertility? How are reproductive
decision-making processes altered by this cryotechnology?
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