1. Before chemotherapy or radiation treatment:
Urgent medical precautions for egg freezing apply to women before chemotherapy or radiation treatment due to a malignant tumour. Since these treatments destroy the eggs in the ovaries, it is highly advisable to freeze ovarian tissue, eggs or embryos in these women before the cancer treatment. The freezing and thawing of ovarian tissue was successfully achieved for the first time in Tel Hashomer by Prof. Mayrov and Prof. Dor in 2005.
2. Women with poor ovarian reserve due to medical reasons:
Gynaecological diseases that affect the ovaries, such as endometriosis, genetic conditions (such as Fragile X, Turner syndrome), and medical treatments from the past that affected fertility, such as chemotherapy treatments during childhood.
3. Women who want to preserve their fertility for “social” reasons (not married yet) or because of a career.
Women who will reach the age of 30 and are still not ready to exercise their right to parent, whether for career reasons or because they have not yet found a suitable partner to co-parent and also women who are busy with their work and career and want to postpone the birth of their children. This is a large and growing group of women or couples. These women must be persuaded to seek counselling.
4. Egg freezing during routine fertilization treatments:
Egg freezing is also relevant for halachic and therapeutic reasons: one of the most common reasons for difficulty conceiving is ovulation. The need for religious women to reject any contact with their husbands except after seven days when they are entirely “clean” of menstrual bleeding results in them “missing” natural ovulation or even ovulation induced by hormonal treatments. The tragedy is even more significant in IVF treatments when, due to the halachic problem, contact between the husband and his wife is prohibited: – a prohibition preventing the ability to provide sperm for fertility treatment. Here, too, the ability to extract eggs and freeze them until sperm donation is possible is a significant breakthrough in our ability to treat ultra-Orthodox couples.
Another problem that may be solved by egg freezing is the problem of (temporary) impotence, which is also encountered by secular men who are required to donate sperm on a particular day and time and according to an order.
5. To establish “egg banks”:
To treat egg donation in women whose ovarian reserve is very poor or who are over 44, there is no chance of conceiving from their eggs, and they need egg donation. Since it is desirable to have a large pool of eggs, “egg banks” began to exist in the world, similar to sperm banks. Such a possibility exists today because it has been proven that the chances of pregnancy with frozen eggs using innovative techniques are identical to that of fresh eggs.