At the beginning of February, Karishma Mehta, the Founder and CEO of the popular Humans of Bombay Instagram page, shared that she chose to freeze her eggs the previous month. She shared the news in a post on Instagram where she shared the important events in her life in the first month of 2025, sparking a conversation about the procedure.

"Been meaning to do this for a while and finally got around to it. I froze my eggs at the beginning of the month :)⭐️," Mehta wrote in the post that has received close to 30,000 likes in about 10 days.

Mehta's Humans of Bombay, styled along the lines of US-based Humans of New York, shares impactful stories of everyday people and has garnered huge following on social media, with close to 30 lakh followers on Instagram and over 12 lakh followers on YouTube.

A few days later, she elaborated on her decision to freeze her eggs, in a reel. "I decided to freeze my eggs because as women especially, there's always a looming cloud of a ticking biological clock," she said.

"It's great if there is a married couple who can plan for kids, but especially when you're unmarried the timelines are not really in your control. And it's a scientific fact that after the ages of 35, your egg count drops. Your chances of conceiving naturally are far less so than in your early thirties. So, egg freezing is that insurance policy for whenever one may choose to have children," she added in the reel that got about 4.4 lakh views and over 8,000 likes.

With more women joining the labour force and delaying marriage, as the average age at marriage for women increasing from about 20 in 2003, to about 23 in 2020, her comments may have resonated with at least some women in India. But is freezing your eggs the right move for you?

First Check spoke to two In Vitro Fertilization specialists to understand the current situation of fertility treatments in India.

Dr Abha Majumdar, Director and Head of the Centre of IVF and Human Reproduction at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi and Dr Aniruddha Malpani, an IVF specialist with over 20 years of experience, who runs Malpani Infertility Clinic in Mumbai, both said that more and more women were opting for non-medical egg freezing out of choice- or social freezing.

"Social Freezing is best if it is done before 35. Now we are seeing a very big surge in women coming for egg freezing at a younger age. Earlier there would only come at around 40, but now we're seeing women come at the ages of 30 and early 30s," said Dr Majumdar.

However, while its popularity has grown, because a lot of women struggle with choosing between "should I pursue a career or should I have a baby?," the numbers are still small according to Dr Malpani.

"You are increasingly starting to see women like this in India as well. But you know with 1.4 billion people it's been a very very small number," he said.

For women who do choose to go the egg freezing route, it could give them some peace of mind. According to the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act of 2021, fertility treatments including IVF can be offered to women over the age of 21 and below 50 years; which means with egg freezing these women would have until the age of 50 to choose to get pregnant.

"When eggs are frozen, they can only be used by the process of getting fertilized outside the body, In Vitro Fertilization. So, for women till the ages of 50 the law has allowed at whatever age she freezes her eggs, she can choose to become a mother till the age of one day less than 50," she explained.

However, it can get expensive, and may be priced out of reach in some parts of the country.

"[The cost] is very differential... For instance, in Mumbai there are centres where the renewal charges for a year are Rs 80,000, whereas in Delhi it can be Rs 10,000. Similarly, IVF also has quite varied charges. In South India too it is expensive, it is almost double of what it is Delhi," said Dr Majumdar.

But Dr Malpani says the high price tag is justified because of the complexity involved in the procedure.

"The reality is that anything which involves egg is going to be expensive as you need to go through the procedure of super ovulation using expensive injections and you need a skilled IVF facility in order to extract the eggs and freeze them. So, I think it's always going to be expensive, I'm sure costs will come down over time but it's still going to be out of reach for the vast majority of Indian women," he said.

While the procedure gives women an option to extend their 'fertile windows,' it is not a foolproof method which will offer guaranteed results.

"The trouble is that patients they have very unrealistic expectations of egg freezing and therefore it's important to counsel them and explain to them exactly what's involved. Because this is just leg one of the procedures... I think when expectations are unrealistic that's when the unhappiness starts because then women start feeling the doctor just took money cheated me didn't do this, that and the other, and then all IVF clinics end up getting a bad reputation," Dr Malpani said.

"What happens is you can store eggs for 2 years or 20 years. Nothing bad happens to the eggs. And no matter how old the woman becomes even if she becomes menopausal you can also reactivate her uterus anytime by giving her hormones. So that's what I meant about so many other issues. How old do you want to be when you start a family? Who is to decide what is right? You know, I mean there are advantages to being older because you are more mature and you have more money but you also have less energy, right? It's a tradeoff," he said.

In conservative societies such as India, where single parenthood is still frowned upon, there are the added pressures of those cultural norms too.

"And often egg freezing is fine but you know ultimately, are you going to get married? Do you have a partner? What does the partner think? Are you going to use donor sperm? Are you going to be a single mother? A lot of patients have thought about it but not deeply enough. And initially it's like okay, fine.

I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. I just want to improve the options I have. So that at least I have more decision-making ability because I have had it. So, I have patients think of it like an insurance policy. If it gives you peace of mind and you understand what the ROI is it's a great option," he said.

Also read: FACT CHECK: Does using a laptop on lap affect male fertility? - First Check

Do you have a health-related claim that you would like us to fact check? Send it to us, and we will fact check it for you! You can send it on WhatsApp at +91-9311223141, mail us at hello@firstcheck.in, or click here to submit it online.