Woman fighting for fertility rights

Legal case over egg-freezing services sparks wider debate among netizens

It happened on Dec 10, 2018, as Xu Zaozao walked into the reproductive department of a hospital in Beijing, intending to consult on egg-freezing services. The procedure, in which a woman's eggs are removed from her ovaries and stored for at least five years, have raised hopes for many women who wanted to delay motherhood, including Xu, who was unmarried at 30 years old.

The female doctor took her request lightly and tried to persuade her into marrying and having a child before focusing on her career. The couples queuing up behind her, who usually came with infertility issues, began casting dubious looks at her and acted impatiently. "Am I, a single woman, wasting the precious time of married couples who are more entitled to fertility service?" she thought to herself.

Frustrated as she was at that moment, Xu was tongue-tied. "I did not understand why a near-stranger would attempt to talk a single woman into marriage and pregnancy. I felt isolated and upset but failed to muster up enough guts to make a rebuttal in that instant," she said.

There was nothing new about the mixed feelings generated by that encounter－a combination of indignation and inability to utter discontent. Growing up as a single child in a provincial capital in Northeast China, Xu was accustomed to shying away from confrontation and giving weight to seniors' opinions.

Having sensed Xu's determination to press on the egg-freezing issue, the doctor flatly told her that her case was a dead-end in China, citing a regulation that governs the use of assisted reproductive technology and bars medical institutions from providing egg-freezing services to single women.

This time, though, something snapped. Walking out of the hospital, Xu decided to "strike back". "I was fed up," she said in an interview.

On Dec 23, Xu brought the country's first legal case over the rights of unmarried women to access egg freezing. The first hearing was held at Beijing Chaoyang District People's Court. Due to the novel coronavirus epidemic, the second hearing, which was expected to take place a few months later, has been delayed indefinitely for now.

In the meantime, Xu is seeking to provoke more discussion and promote unmarried women's access to egg freezing among other issues centering on the needs of contemporary women. "The support and attention I gained after the first hearing were beyond my expectation. It turned out that there are a large group (of women) out there who are confronted with the same dilemma like I did," she said.

Outside the courtroom, she was not only greeted by a media swarming to document the legal process, but also social organizations and female college students who showed up as a token of support. Scrolling through posts and comments posted on social media, Xu related to similar stories of women who are facing pressure exerted by social norms. This includes that marriage and domestic responsibilities should prevail over career or personal preference for women in their late 20s or 30s.

In late January, she participated in a seminar that gathered lawyers, psychologists and researchers on fertility and feminist issues to discuss restraints and possible consequences of opening up egg freezing to all women. "Some women who have already had their eggs harvested and frozen through overseas agencies also attended and said they were paying close attention to my case," Xu said.

Then in late April, she shared her experiences and motivations for mounting the legal case during an online meeting with other women who are pondering egg freezing for different reasons. "Women of my age range are facing an array of uncertainties in their lives－career development, relationships, fertility choices－and many of us just need to use egg freezing as one way to alleviate some pressure and bring a sense of security," she said.

Medical experts have agreed that ovaries deteriorate quickly after the age of 35. It is not easy to get pregnant and the risk of miscarriage or birth defects will multiply past that threshold.

"When I first approached my lawyer and decided to launch the legal case, all I wanted was to finish the hearings as soon as possible. But now, seeing that so many relevant stories have been told and such a large number of supportive groups have emerged, I wanted to pursue every possible legal route that can make a change," Xu said. "I am tired of being taken as an obedient child and saying nothing when feeling frustrated or uncomfortable."

Xu was born in 1988 and aware that her generation had enjoyed plenty of education opportunities and advantages that were inaccessible before. But the trade-off, based on her own experiences, is that she was being constantly shaped into being considerate and losing motivation to defend for herself.

At high school, she was told off by a teacher for laughing at a joke told by her desk mate, a boy. "You are a girl. Save some face for yourself. Girls should not be rowdy," she was told. Xu got used to staying quiet over time.

When she graduated from college and entered the workplace for the first time, she was assigned to make coffee and clean up fruit peel and food packaging－errands that were deemed as being suitable for girls.

At 25, she decided to go to Wuhan in Hubei province for graduate studies.

"My supervisor had mentioned several times that he wanted to throw a matchmaking party and introduce me and some fellow female students to boys from other schools. I didn't know how to respond," she said.

"I think I was nurtured to become unconfident and unsure of myself. For women, it is important to continuously remind yourself to trust and respect your own thinking so as to avoid not knowing how to express or defend your standing later in life."

Expanding access to egg-freezing services to unmarried women will probably remain a distant proposition in the country for a long time, as concerns for single-parent families and surrogate pregnancy still stand. But Xu is determined to press ahead with her case while engaging in more conversations surrounding the topic.

"If I give up, there is bound to be another girl who has to go through the same procedure, shouldering all the pressure and unease as I had went through," she said. "I am not only racing against my own biological clock but also opening a window to more possibilities for other females."