Dr Gunasheela is deeply supportive of women pursuing education and careers, but she believes society often frames the conversation incorrectly.
Published Nov 20, 2025 | 5:42 PM ⚊ Updated Nov 20, 2025 | 5:42 PM
Representational image. Credit: iStock
Synopsis: Bengaluru-based gynaecologist Dr Devika Gunasheela calls egg freezing a “backup, not guarantee” amid rising debate. Best before 35, it counters faster fertility decline in Indian women due to lifestyle and pollutants. She urges natural conception first, honest counselling, and warns against treating it as a lifestyle fix or corporate pressure tactic.
As public conversations around egg freezing intensify—fuelled as a reaction to entrepreneur Upasana Konidela’s views on it— renowned gynaecologist and obstetrician Dr Devika Gunasheela, CEO of Gunasheela Surgical and Maternity Hospital in Bengaluru, says it is time to bring clarity, science, and realism back into the discussion.
In a conversation with South First, she explains why egg freezing can be a useful option for women, but only when framed honestly and understood in the right context.
“Girls are climbing the corporate ladder, marriages are getting delayed, and they’re searching for the ‘Mr Right’. Freezing eggs has come up as an option because life isn’t always linear,” she says.
However, she is quick to underline the boundaries of what technology can and cannot do. “Freezing your eggs should never be taken as an alternative to having a baby the organic way. Natural pregnancy should always be the first option for anyone who is able to try.”
Dr Gunasheela says, “Freezing your eggs is a backup, not a guarantee,” She stressed that egg freezing has become relevant because Indian women are experiencing faster fertility decline than previous generations.
“Age is the biggest determinant of egg quality. And for some reason, Indian women are losing their fertility very quickly. I’m seeing a lot of young women with very low ovarian reserve.”
She cites lifestyle, pollutants, pesticides, and plastics—“all endocrine disruptors”—as possible reasons behind the trend.
Unlike men, whose bodies produce sperm continuously, women are born with a finite reserve of eggs.
“Women don’t have an egg factory. Every month thousands of eggs are destroyed to release just one. So the reserve is always going down.”
Meanwhile, the recently announced data from the Directorate of Public Health also shows that Southern India is witnessing a pronounced fall in fertility because of deep social and economic shifts that have transformed family norms. One of the strongest drivers, doctors and experts working in this area told South First is the region’s exceptional progress in human development particularly in women’s education.
With nearly universal literacy and widespread higher education among women, aspirations have changed. The experts opined that the women are marrying later, prioritising careers, and delaying childbirth.
Migration for jobs and studies both within India and abroad also plays a major role, as long distance marriages and demanding work schedules naturally reduce the time couples spend together, leading to fewer planned pregnancies.
It was also found that economic pressures have further accelerated the decline. The cost of raising a child from schooling to healthcare has increased sharply, especially in nuclear family settings where there is limited support from extended relatives.
The preference for small families, once rooted in state-driven family planning efforts, has now evolved into a mindset where having just one child or none at all is seen as a more manageable and desirable lifestyle choice.
While egg freezing is often positioned as a way to buy time, Dr. Gunasheela stresses that timing matters. “Technically, before 32–33 is ideal. 35 is the cutoff we usually look at. After that, the decline in egg quality and ovarian reserve becomes very rapid.”
That does not mean older women cannot freeze their eggs, but she explains that clinics manage expectations differently. “If someone comes at 36 or 37 and is still not ready to settle down, we say okay, freeze them now—but don’t wait till 40. After 40 or 41, it becomes very difficult.”
Egg freezing involves the same initial steps as IVF. The process begins with hormonal stimulation, in which the woman takes daily injections/medications for about 10–12 days to help the ovaries produce multiple mature eggs. During this period, doctors monitor her closely through blood tests and ultrasounds to track how the follicles are developing.
Once the eggs are ready, they are retrieved through a short, minimally invasive procedure done under light anesthesia. A thin needle is inserted vaginally to collect the eggs from the ovaries, and the woman usually goes home the same day.
After retrieval, the mature eggs are rapidly frozen using a technique called vitrification, which prevents ice crystals from damaging them. These eggs are then stored in liquid nitrogen tanks and can remain frozen for years without deteriorating. Whenever the woman chooses to attempt pregnancy, the eggs are thawed, fertilised with sperm through IVF or ICSI, and the resulting embryos are transferred into the uterus.
However, she cautions that “While egg freezing offers women more reproductive flexibility, it is not a guarantee, and its success depends heavily on the age at which the eggs were frozen and the woman’s overall reproductive health. First choice of priority should always be a natural conception.”
“You start on day 3 of your period, take medications for around 10 days, monitor follicles, and when they reach 17–18 mm, we retrieve the eggs and freeze them at –196°C in liquid nitrogen,” she explains.
To achieve good pregnancy rates later, quantity matters.
“The best outcomes happen when we get 10–15 eggs. Freezing just two or three is not really worth it,” And once frozen, not all eggs survive equally.
“When you take eggs out of the liquid nitrogen, some will die, some lose quality. So 10 eggs may become 6–7 embryos in a good case. And nothing guarantees pregnancy. If someone tells you, ‘Freeze your eggs, I guarantee a baby,’ that’s completely wrong.”
Dr Gunasheela accepts that it is a costly affair. While egg freezing has become more common in urban India, the economics remain prohibitive for many.
Clinics typically charge Rs 1.5- Rs 2.5 lakh for the initial freezing cycle, which includes hormonal stimulation, monitoring, blood tests, egg retrieval, and cryopreservation.
Storage adds an annual cost of Rs 25,000 to 50,000. Some clinics do it for Rs 15000 to Rs 20000 annually. When women return years later to use the frozen eggs, they face another set of expenses: Rs 75,000–Rs 1.5 lakh for thawing, fertilisation and Rs 2– Rs 3 lakh per IVF cycle to attempt pregnancy. For many, the total outlay over several years can reach Rs 5 to 10 lakh or more.
Doctors say young women seldom receive this information upfront when egg freezing is promoted as a lifestyle choice.
While Gunasheela is deeply supportive of women pursuing education and careers, she believes society often frames the conversation incorrectly.
“Why should one give up a career for a family or a family for a career? Everything should go together—it’s symbiotic.”
For her, motherhood and ambition are not mutually exclusive. “There’s no perfect time to have a baby for a working woman. You jump into the deep end of the pool and swim with the baby on your head. That’s what we all did.”
She recalls bringing her infant to the hospital during surgeries. “I’ve done C-sections with my baby sleeping in a carry cot in my office. You just manage. Nothing needs to be put on hold.”
Ultimately, Dr Gunasheela sees egg freezing as a valuable tool—one that can give women emotional security, especially if their personal lives don’t unfold as expected.
“If a woman freezes her eggs at 32 and is still unmarried at 40, she has the freedom to still have a baby using her younger, better-quality eggs. That’s the boon.”
But she cautions against overselling the technology as a foolproof solution.
“It’s an option, not a substitute. And it must be explained with total honesty—no guarantees, no false promises.”
Despite the criticism, doctors agree on one thing: egg freezing is a valid and often necessary option, especially for women with medical conditions or those who genuinely need more time. What they are calling for is balance.
“Women deserve autonomy,” said a Chennai-based fertility specialist. “But they also deserve honesty. Informed choice is not anti-choice.”
Meanwhile Kavita Gajendran, women’s right activist from Chennai agrees that women focusing on careers and becoming financially independent is valid and financial independence has always been central to women’s empowerment, and it comes from building a stable career.
However, “egg freezing is essentially another industry, and asking young girls on stage to ‘freeze your eggs’ promotes a cottage pharmaceutical business that is costly and inaccessible to crores of Indian women,” says Gajendran.
She argues that it is a very personal and individual decision. No one should be preaching this to women, especially when “it comes from a place of privilege.”
(Edited by Amit Vasudev)
