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Freezing Eggs in a Warming World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 May 2015
Abstract
Most discussions of population control focus on how many children people should have, but ignore issues to do with the timing, so there is little discussion of the value of delaying childbearing. Once we recognize that delaying childbearing can have a significant impact on the size of the population, and, therefore, on CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) emissions, our perspective on egg freezing changes significantly. In this article, I argue that, if we focus on future generations in general, rather than focusing only on the children who would be conceived using frozen eggs, policies permitting or encouraging the freezing of eggs may reduce potential harms to future generations. This, I argue, may block the objections to egg freezing for non-medical reasons which focus on the potential risks to the child (without requiring an appeal to the non-identity problem).
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References
1 Carbon dioxide equivalent.
2 Harwood, Karey, ‘Egg Freezing: A Breakthrough for Reproductive Autonomy?’, Bioethics 23.1 (2009), pp. 39–46, at 40CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
3 Goold, Imogen and Savulescu, Julian, ‘In Favour of Freezing Eggs for Non-medical Reasons’, Bioethics 23.1 (2009), pp. 47–58, at 55CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
4 Goold and Savulescu, ‘In Favour of Freezing Eggs’, p. 53.
5 Goold and Savulescu, ‘In Favour of Freezing Eggs’, p. 55; Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons, (Oxford, 1984), ch. 16Google Scholar.
6 See Parfit, Reasons and Persons, ch. 16, Feinberg, Joel, Harmless Wrongdoing (Oxford, 1990) pp. 325–7Google Scholar, and Mulgan, Tim, Future People: A Moderate Consequentialist Account of Our Obligations to Future Generations (Oxford, 2006), pp. 7–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Rob Lawlor, ‘Questioning the Significance of the Non-identity Problem in Applied Ethics’, Journal of Medical Ethics (forthcoming).
7 Harman, Elizabeth, ‘Can we Harm and Benefit in Creating?’, Philosophical Perspectives 18.1 (2004), pp. 89–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 107 (my italics).
8 Harman ‘Can we Harm?’, p. 107. In this article, I do not consider Harman's argument, or engage with the arguments to support Harman or Parfit. For my purposes, it is sufficient to point out that this issue is not completely settled.
9 Harwood, ‘Egg Freezing’, p. 44.
10 Hardin, Garrett, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science 162. 3859 (1968), pp. 1243–8Google ScholarPubMed.
11 Mulgan, Tim, ‘The Demanding Future’, The Problem of Moral Demandingness: New Philosophical Essays, ed. Chappell, Timothy (London, 2009), pp. 201–19, at 201Google Scholar.
12 Mulgan, ‘The Demanding Future’, pp. 215–16.
13 Mulgan, Future People, p. 186.
14 Think, for example, of the commons used for grazing in Hardin's ‘Tragedy of the Commons’, or fish supplies in a small river or lake.
15 This figure is Mike Berners-Lee's estimate of the CO2e emissions from having a child, based on the assumption that the child ‘leads a typical UK lifestyle’, that they will live to the age of 79 (UK life expectancy), and that ‘the average carbon footprint will decrease by 3.9 per cent each year.’ For simplicity, it does not include the footprint of that child's own offspring. Berners-Lee, Mike, How Bad are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything (London, 2010), pp. 151Google Scholar and 152. If Berners-Lee had used figures for America, the carbon footprint could have been almost double. See How Bad are Bananas?, p. 139. This higher figure also seems to be in keeping with John Broome, referencing David Frame, who states that: ‘An average person from a rich country born in 1950 will emit around 800 tonnes in a lifetime’ (Frame, David, Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World (New York, 2012), p. 74Google Scholar).
16 373 × 11.
17 373 × 6.
18 Here, the 50/80, 20/80, 60/80 and 25/80 are used to represent those who are still alive, and haven't lived the full eighty years of life at the end of the 200 years. (As with the island cases, I am assuming a life of eighty years – rounding up Mike Berners-Lee's seventy-nine years, though I use his estimate of 373 tonnes CO2e emissions, unchanged.)
19 Hansen, Michèle, Bower, Carol, Milne, Elizabeth, de Klerk, Nicholas and Kurinczuk, Jennifer J., ‘Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Risk of Birth Defects – A Systematic Review’, Human Reproduction, 20.2 (2005), pp. 328–38, at 335CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
20 Hansen et al., ‘Assisted Reproductive Technologies’, p. 335.
21 Hansen et al., ‘Assisted Reproductive Technologies’, p. 330.
22 Hansen et al., ‘Assisted Reproductive Technologies’, p. 334.
23 Hansen et al., ‘Assisted Reproductive Technologies’, p. 335.
24 Or 5.6% compared to 4%, if the baseline prevalence is 4%.
25 You may have noticed that this figure is significantly larger than the figure that I used for a lifetime's emissions earlier. Before, I was using Mike Berners-Lee's estimate, while here I am using John Broome's. It should be noted, however, that the difference between the two figures may be explained by the fact that Berners-Lee's estimate is for someone living in the UK, while John Broome refers to someone born in a ‘rich country’. If the rich country is America or Australia, this is consistent with Berners-Lee's estimates. See n. 15.
26 Broome, Climate Matters, p. 74.
27 Broome, John, ‘The Most Important Thing about Climate Change’, Public Policy: Why Ethics Matters, ed. Boston, Jonathan, Bradstock, Andrew and Eng, David (Acton, 2010), pp. 101–16, at 106Google Scholar.
28 Broome, ‘The Most Important Thing’, p. 105.
29 Broome, ‘The Most Important Thing’, p. 106.
30 Broome, ‘The Most Important Thing’, pp. 107–8.
31 Though, of course, this argument could still be rejected by those who reject the premise, and deny that IVF should be permitted even in the case of infertility.
32 In addition to the interests of the child, there are other considerations to take into account, particularly in relation to encouraging egg freezing. I plan to discuss these in ‘Egg Freezing and Public Policy’.
33 Ross, David, The Right and the Good, ed. Stratton-Lake, Philip (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), p. 21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
34 David McKay provides a brief description of how small electric vehicles compare to large internal combustion engine vehicles in the video ‘Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air’, from 29.23–32.00. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFosQtEqzSE&feature=player_detailpage#t=1763s> (2010).
35 Broome, Climate Matters, p. 33.
36 My reasons for resisting these more radical conclusions will be discussed in my ‘Egg Freezing and Public Policy’.
37 Ian Sample, ‘Have your eggs frozen while you’re still young, scientists advise women’, The Guardian, <http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/oct/18/eggs-frozen-young-women> (18 October 2011).
38 Or only has one, or only has two, etc., depending on how strong you want the policy to be.
39 I suggest the age of 32 because if women froze their eggs at a younger age, as a kind of insurance policy, many of those women would be likely to have children naturally, before they needed to use frozen eggs. Therefore, it could be a waste of resources. On the other hand, if women freeze their eggs after the age of 32, the chances of successful IVF using the eggs begins to decline and the risks begin to rise. Somewhere around the age of 32, therefore, seems to be a reasonable compromise.
40 Obviously, there would be exceptions, such as when medical treatment would cause infertility, but the focus, here, is on egg freezing for non-medical reasons.
41 There are, however, other ethical issues relating to encouraging women to freeze their eggs, in order to have children later in life. I will address these in ‘Egg Freezing and Public Policy’.
42 Mulgan, Future People, p. 194.
43 Mulgan, ‘The Demanding Future’, pp. 215–16.
44 Mulgan, Future People, p. 180.
45 I am grateful to Andrew Stanners, Gerald Lang and Elizabeth Ellis for helpful discussions and comments on earlier drafts of this article, and I am also grateful to an anonymous referee for further comments.