Your Fertile Years - What You Need to Know to Make Informed Choices by Professor Joyce Harper
Your Fertile Years - What You Need to Know to Make Informed Choices by Professor Joyce Harper

Your Fertile Years

When Joyce was in her twenties she started working in the field of fertility and she often had conversations with friends about their bodies and their fertility.  At this time she read ‘Ourbody, ourselves’ and felt it was a book that every woman should read…

Your Joyful Years

In Your Joyful Years, Professor Joyce Harper provides an empowering, evidence-based guide to thriving beyond 50. Moving past the menopause, this book reframes later life as a vibrant new beginning—a time to rediscover purpose and prioritise self-care. Combining 40 years of scientific expertise with the candid wisdom of 50 inspiring women, Professor Harper offers a reassuring roadmap to health, happiness, and living authentically. This is the essential second book in her life-stage trilogy, proving that your best years are still to come.

Season 2 / Episode 16 – 8 August

Dr Lucy van de Wiel: Freezing fertility: is egg freezing the answer?

In this podcast Professor Joyce Harper will be interviewing guests to discuss all things health related and debunking some of the many myths around our health.

Lucy van de Wiel was a Research Associate in the Reproductive Sociology Research Group (ReproSoc) at the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge. She is currently a Lecturer and Postgraduate Research Director in Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. She has founded and is chair of the Reproduction Research Group at King’s.

Her research focuses on the introduction of new reproductive technologies such as egg freezing, time-lapse embryo imaging and Preimplantation Genetic Testing for Aneuploidy (PGT-A). She explores how these technologies give insight into broader developments within the sector, including the datafication of reproduction and the financialisation of fertility. She also researches telemedical abortion in the post-Roe landscape.

She has published an Open Access booked on egg freezing with New York University Press titled Freezing Fertility: Oocyte Cryopreservation and the Gender Politics of AgingFreezing Fertility has inspired a feature documentary, also called Freezing Fertility.

In this episode, Lucy explains all aspects of egg freezing. She discusses what happens when a woman undergoes the procedure, how successful it is, and how much it costs. It is not a simple procedure to go through, it is not that successful with no guarantee of a baby and it is expensive, with multiple rounds usually being recommended. So why would any woman want to freeze her eggs? Joyce and Lucy answer this question and discuss the interesting fact that few women have come back to use their frozen eggs. And what does the future hold – is this a procedure that will become common place or are other technologies being developed that will replace egg freezing?

Professor Joyce Harper

Podcast Episodes