But the real game changer for professional women, according to Tober, is a level playing field in the workplace -- to become a society that supports flexible work environments and family leave policies, and provides better, quality childcare -- so women actually can have children in their peak fertility years. Unfortunately though, for the media, this lacks the appealing personal narrative of egg freezing. At a friend's baby shower for example (as Richards describes her own emotional journey), it's certainly more comforting to know that your eggs are "safely" frozen away so you can have your baby when you're ready, than to argue that American companies should institute longer maternity leaves and more flexible work arrangements.

"A lot of women, especially affluent women, are perpetuating the myth in the media and telling younger women, if you freeze your eggs, you won't have the pressure of finding the right partner," Tober said. But while they're framing the issue as an extension of choice, the truth is, at $7,000 to $10,000 a round, plus storage fees, only a fraction of adult women would ever have this choice (even if, one day, insurance companies or employers picked up part of the tab).

The rest of the female population, meanwhile, remains stuck in a work place that still doesn't adequately support families and mothers -- a public dialogue that can easily be lost when the media is telling women how easy it can be if we all just freeze our eggs. And then what's going to happen to these women at 45 when they try to continue their career and raise a newborn? Nothing, materially, will have changed since they were 36, unless they're all planning on a corner office with an adjacent nursery, like Marissa Meyer built, to accommodate their babies and nannies.

At the same time, there's also the potential for an odd, egg freezing dichotomy and wealth divide, between the women who can afford to freeze their eggs to pursue their careers, and the women in their twenties who may soon be able to sell their eggs for medical research. A new bill under consideration in the California legislature and sponsored by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, AB 926, would allow researchers to pay women cash for their eggs, overturning the existing National Academy of Sciences guidelines. Proponents of AB 926 argue that the bill promotes social equality by offering "fair compensation" to women and "treat[ing] them equally to other research subjects."

Tober believes that the media is missing the other half of the egg freezing story -- that women who sell their eggs aren't like traditional subjects in clinical trials. Researchers aren't studying their reactions to experimental drugs or procedures. They're seeking a woman's raw material for scientific work, eggs that (unlike sperm donation) require high doses of hormone shots and a medical procedure that can result in health complications to harvest. So, while you have privileged, professional women electively freezing their eggs on one end of the spectrum, AB 926 creates a real risk -- that low-income women and college students under financial pressure will be enticed to sell their eggs for science -- on the other.