What no one tells you about freezing your eggs | Natalie Lampert | TEDxBoulder

Ovaries. Most women have two; journalist Natalie Lampert has only one. Then, in her early twenties, she almost lost it, along with her ability to ever have biological children. Doctors urged her to freeze her eggs, and Lampert started asking questions.

What was once science fiction is now simply science: Fertility can be frozen in time. Hundreds of thousands of women worldwide have opted to freeze their eggs. Along with IVF, egg freezing is touted as a way for women to “have it all” by conquering their biological clocks, in line with the global trend of delaying pregnancy and motherhood. A generation after the Pill, this revolutionary technology offers a new kind of freedom for women. But does egg freezing give women real agency or just the illusion of it?

It’s never been so important for a person with ovaries to understand their body, their options, and their reproductive autonomy. But when it comes to women’s health, many of those options—especially technologies that promise control over something like fertility—aren’t all what they seem to be. In this powerful talk, Lampert explains why.

Natalie Lampert is an award-winning journalist and the author of THE BIG FREEZE: A Reporter’s Personal Journey into the World of Egg Freezing and the Quest to Control Our Fertility (Random House, 2024). A former Fulbright scholar, she has written for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and The Washington Post, among other publications. She has a master’s degree in journalism from New York University and has received fellowships and grants from Investigative Reporters & Editors, the Logan Nonfiction program, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx