Doctors here have lobbied to change the laws, citing the 2013 decision by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine to

lift the ‘experimental’ label on egg freezing

as proof that it is safe enough to introduce in Singapore. But MOH has

remained unmoved

. What’s more puzzling still is that

the policy seems to run counter to their efforts to boost population numbers.

I can only surmise that the ministry fears it will encourage more younger women to postpone childbearing, and deems the costs incurred by individuals who want to undergo egg freezing higher than any potential benefit that more successful births at a later maternal age serves to Singaporean society. Easier to bait young women to settle down earlier with housing benefits, healthcare subsidies, and fertility health campaigns.

This is the typically paternalistic approach we should be used to by now. And this is precisely what makes it so dangerous. We’ve become so accustomed to the patriarchal leanings of our society that tell us a man’s ambition is more important than a woman’s simply because of boundaries that biology has set for her, we hardly push back.

And yet. This isn’t anything like the other nanny state rules we must adhere to, whether it’s e-cigarettes, sports betting, or alcohol consumption in public. Unlike those other bans, which are imposed on things external to us, this legislation on egg freezing reaches deep within the physical boundaries of its citizens’ bodies and rips the choice right out of them.

To every woman who wants a child but isn’t ready, this infringement feels acutely personal and painfully intrusive. And whereas women like Ase belonging to the upper middle class or higher can defiantly make the trip to Bangkok, Spain, or the US to regain some control over the gonads that insist on punishing them by springing leaks in their youth, it is the woman who cannot afford this act of protest who hurts the most from the government ban.

This woman bears the burden of knowledge and possibilities, yet is truly helpless to act on it. Deprived of her agency, she is flung far across the gaping chasm between the uncertain now and the future she has envisioned for herself.

This psychological torture eating at her is what we forget when we make the cost-benefit analysis for egg freezing. Who can blame a people that have been trained to think habitually in terms of pros versus cons and risks versus rewards? The large hat of the economist obscures the vision of the compassionate humanist within all of us.I am an outsider looking in. I still have no desire to have children, and probably never will.

But I recognise in Ase Wang and in Dr Pamela Tan the respect for how motherhood cannot be reduced to numbers and probabilities. It is an intensely private yet universally shared experience that is powerful enough to move the disempowered like them to find workarounds and to support other women with advocacy and information. And it should be fiercely defended, at all costs, not just by individuals but by the state as well.