there are so many different ways to make money nowadays!

today in the toronto star they feature a toronto clinic that is now offering what is called "social" egg freezing.

when i first read that i thought it meant that you got a group rate if you went with your friends to get your future embryos put on ice, but that's not what it means.

it means, according to the clinic's website, that you can freeze your eggs. on the lifequest clinic's blog they describe elective egg freezing as the perfect option for those who are "19 and 36 years old, and [who] know [they]want to have a family but the time is just not right. "

is egg freezing right for you? well, here are some indicators that it might be: "You may be building your career; or you may be single and waiting until you meet the right partner. There may be medical reasons as well, such as preserving fertility before chemotherapy for the treatment of cancer. Egg freezing offers the opportunity for a woman to preserve her eggs at the peak of her fertility so she can have genetically-related children at a later, more appropriate time in her life."

the peak of fertility!! genetically-related children!! appropriate timing!!

it sounds so easy doesn't it? want babies some day? well freeze those suckers up now and they'll just be waiting for you in ten years.

they mention somewhere in there that egg freezing is still considered a research procedure and only a very small number of babies have been born from frozen eggs, but who cares? this is 2010, after all, and don't we deserve to have every option open to us at all times if we can afford it? of course we do!

so after some appointments, mandatory counselling, and injecting yourself with hormones for a few weeks, you'll get a needle inserted into your ovaries and they'll suck out your future babies and "slow freeze" them. after that you can go on with your life and not worry about having a baby right away.

it's like this comic says (from the clinic's twitter) "get an education...check! establish career...check! oh my god! i forgot to have a baby!"

yes, women are allowed to have goals and priorities beyond family now. but being allowed can't change the fact that we are biologically DESTINED to pop out babies. the thought of our eggs drying up and becoming useless is an idea that is anathema to us.

today the toronto star also covered the new program designed to provide dental care to poor kids and a story about abuses in a toronto nursing home. about 130,000 children under 17 in ontario are unable to access basic dental care like check-ups and cleaning(it probably won't be these kids having their eggs frozen at 19 years old).

in the same newspaper, on the same day, you can read about the social stratification that allows some people to freeze their eggs for posterity and others to watch their teeth rot out of their head.

let's not even get into the other issues we have in canada, literacy rates, the reserve system where kids grow up without clean water, racism, homophobia, and skyrocketing tuition. those issues aren't going to affect the frozen egg child born in ten years!

and, some people have bigger problems to think about, like making sure they have "genetically-related" children some day when they're 45. yes, some day when you hang your $5,000.00 business suit up in your closet for the last time you'll have your own child(and probably your own nanny brought in by the foreign workers program to take care of it for you) you won't have to worry about the kids who can't afford to have their teeth cleaned or who don't have parents and live in foster homes.

you'll be able to look at that your growing belly, a feat achieved by large amounts of synthetic hormones and dollar bills and think "yes, i deserve this."