Leading Rabbi Recommends Egg Freezing for Single Women

I just heard about a revolutionary ruling from one of Israel’s leading rabbis regarding egg freezing for single women.

Rabbi Menachem Borshtein Shlit”a, the director of Machon Puah, is recommending for single women over the age of 32 to freeze their eggs, in order to enable them to have children if they eventually marry.

Rabbi Borshtein explains:
“There have been religious singles who were interested in having children, and they inquired about performing IVF, but none of the great rabbis today allow this type of IVF. Some actually see IVF for singles as a severe halachic problem. And even those rabbis who don’t forbid IVF for single women admit that it is impossible to make one person (the mother) happy at the expense of another (the fatherless child). And a father is still an important figure in the life a child.

…Over the past year, in Spain and in Israel, doctors have developed a new option [to preserve fertility for older singles]—and that is freezing eggs.

In the past, the [medical community] did not know how to freeze eggs, but today that technology does finally exist. In January of this year, the Israeli Ministry of Health authorized women between the ages of 30 and 41 to freeze their eggs, and to use them to become pregnant until the age of 54.

We recommend that every single woman over the age of 32 should freeze her eggs. I recommend that if she can afford it, she should do this procedure in Spain, because in Israel there is still insufficient expertise with this new procedure. If the woman is unable to do that, she should wait a year or two, by which time, I believe, there will be more knowledge about this procedure in Israel as well.”*

May Hashem bless all the older singles that this year they will get married and by next year at this time, they will be joining the JewishMOM.com mailing list! Amen, ken yehee ratson!

Click here to read the complete Ynet article (in Hebrew)

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