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In today’s edition: a new boss at 60 Minutes, an approval process to watch at the FDA, and Fortune MPW editorial director Ellie Austin on three startups to watch in the fertility category.
– Fertility finances. Certain subjects draw a big reaction from the readers of this newsletter, and the price of fertility treatments is one of them. Last week, I wrote about how the popularization of egg freezing is creating a new “fertility wealth gap” between young men and women. While both genders can reap rewards from having children later in life, biology dictates that it is women who must pay huge sums of money to preserve their fertility. (One egg-freezing cycle costs between $15,000 and $20,000 in most major U.S. cities.)
I received so many messages from women in response to this essay. Some shared personal stories. One reader wrote that if she had decided to invest her money in her thirties, rather than spending it on three rounds of egg freezing that ultimately didn’t result in a baby, she would have around $155,000 in the bank by retirement age. Others explained that, having decided not to freeze eggs because of the price tag, they were now struggling to conceive and felt guilty for not prioritizing their fertility at all costs when they were younger.
Beyond the financial component, these experiences reinforce the mental load that women who want (or maybe want) children take on if, for whatever reason, they need to preserve their fertility. It’s a complex, rarely discussed issue, but there is reason for optimism: A handful of startups are employing different approaches to make egg freezing more accessible. Below are three of them, and unsurprisingly, they are all female founded.
Cofertility allows women to freeze their eggs for free when they donate half to another family. The startup recently closed a $7.25 million Series A round, bringing its total funding to $16 million.
Freeze started as a public Google spreadsheet that its two founders compiled while researching their own egg-freezing cycles. It is now a company built around its Compare Clinics tool, which gives women clear, detailed pricing information for over 500 clinics in the U.S. and abroad.
Gameto, a biotech company, is working on a “lightweight” version of IVF that uses an ovarian support cell technology to mature eggs outside of the body. The goal? To drastically reduce the number of hormone injections—and time—required for IVF and egg-freezing cycles in the hope of driving down the cost and invasiveness of fertility treatments. The technology resulted in its first ever birth at the end of last year.
These companies are bright spots in an industry that is sometimes accused of earning huge profits off women’s fears. Let me know if there are any other cost-conscious fertility startups that should be on my radar.
Ellie Austin
ellie.austin@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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