Can tech giants stop female employees' biological clocks?

Apple and Facebook have announced they will offer insurance coverage for infertility treatments, sperm donation, and egg freezing, igniting a debate about the wisdom of encouraging women to try to hit snooze on their biological clocks. The Silicon Valley companies hope the move will draw more women to a largely male-dominated field.

Women are marrying and having children later in life. A 2011 Pew Research study found women’s average marrying age has increased to almost 27 years old, from 20 years old in 1960. Delayed marriage means delayed childbirth. And some women, whether single or married, see themselves in a race against their biological clock. Freezing eggs either frees them from extra pressure in pursuing relationships or frees them to pursue a career, proponents say.

“Anything that gives women more control over the timing of fertility is going to be helpful to professional women,” said Shelley Correll, director of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. “It potentially addresses the conflicts between the biological clock and the clockwork of women’s careers: The time that’s most important in work, for getting your career established, often coincides with normal fertility time for women. This can potentially help resolve that by pushing women’s fertility into the future.”

Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook, has encouraged women to prioritize their career or education, something she labels “leaning in.” One woman who froze her eggs told Bloomberg Businessweek earlier this year that she felt “empowered” after freezing her eggs. For her, the procedure removed pressure from dating—she hopes she won’t present herself as desperate to have children. The procedure also removed some guilt about dedicating herself to her career. “It’s like, thank God, I don’t have to focus on having kids quite yet. I’m not in a real panic anymore,” she told Bloomberg.

A study conducted by the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology found that 2 percent of babies born in the United States are conceived through fertility assistance. Facebook covers up to $20,000 in fertility treatments dispersed throughout employment. Apple offers a similar package that will start next year.

Several large companies expressed doubt just seven years ago about providing fertility coverage, according to Bloomberg. When Extend Fertility, a network of fertility centers, reached out to the companies about providing fertility coverage, they expressed concern about being accused of doing it for the wrong reasons. They didn’t want employees to think they were “paying to freeze a woman’s eggs so she just keeps working harder,” Extend Fertility CEO Christy Jones told Bloomberg.

Jennifer Lahl at the Center for Bioethics and Culture said women also shoud be worried that fertility centers are taking advantage of women’s fertility concerns to promote a procedure that might not provide the marketed result: a baby.

Although eggs from a 27-year-old are more fertile than eggs from a 37-year-old, the success rate for egg freezing is still low despite a more advanced fast-freeze technique. Eggs frozen for a 30-year old woman have a 13.2 percent implantation success rate, which drops to 8.6 percent for a 40-year old woman, Lahl explained in an article for Public Discourse. And the fertility treatments required for harvesting eggs can create swelling and pain in the ovaries. The fertility drugs also can cause cancer, especially if a woman is stimulated to produce 15 or 20 eggs at once.

Even with frozen eggs, pregnancies for women over 30 carry higher risk of maternal death and stillbirth, Lahl said. Only teen pregnancies carry higher risk of infant mortality than pregnancies for women in their 40s.

And high costs accompany the high risk and low success rates. The initial egg freezing procedure can cost more than $10,000. Once the eggs are harvested, women pay a yearly storage fee, which can cost hundreds of dollars. When a woman is ready to use her eggs, she’ll have to pay for in-vitro fertilization and embryo transfer.

“The biological clock is real,” Lahl said. “For both mother and child, pregnancy is better earlier rather than later. Assisted reproductive technology is not a magic pill to take when you are ready for a baby.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.