Woman urges national policy on egg freezing

A woman is calling on China to adopt a policy in Northeast China's Jilin Province allowing the freezing of eggs in Chinese hospitals.

Egg freezing [File photo: VCG]

Zhan Yingying (pseudonym) from Guangdong sent a letter to the Standing Committee of Jilin Provincial People's Congress on Wednesday, suggesting that local hospitals allow single women to have children by medical reproductive technologies, including egg freezing, and to expand the policy nationwide.

"I am 29 years old, no plans to marry nor have a child, but I think I should be allowed to freeze my eggs in my country whenever I want," Zhan told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Single women of legal marrying age, who decide not to marry, can give birth by adopting legal medical technologies, according to the Regulations of Jilin Province on Population and Family Planning.

Although the regulation did not specifically cite egg freezing, Zhan thinks it is one reproductive method.

Zhan said many hospitals in China have the technology as well as qualifications to do egg freezing, but only for married women.

Two kinds of women in China are allowed to freeze their eggs - married women who want to have a test-tube baby and single women who suffer from malignant tumors, Xue Qing, a doctor specializing in gynaecology and obstetrics at Peking University First Hospital, was quoted in a report from the Beijing Evening News as saying in July 2015.

Zhan was not the only single woman who wants to freeze her eggs.

"It makes me feel anxious whenever I think of this issue though I'm still young and not eager for a child," Yang Yang (pseudonym), a 28-year-old lesbian living in Beijing, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

"The current regulation makes me feel I have limited rights because of my sexual orientation and my identity as a single woman. People are born with the right to give birth," Yang added.

The egg freezing issue once gained prominence when Chinese actress Xu Jinglei advocated the controversial technology in China in 2015.