60 Minutes - 05/31/2026: Germany Rearms, Freezing the Biological Clock

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

Germany is racing to rearm as the war in Ukraine shakes its sense of security, forcing the country to confront its military past as it strengthens its military might. Correspondent Bill Whitaker observes basic training in northwest Germany and speaks with defense minister Boris Pistorius in Berlin to find out how Germany plans to achieve its aim of building the most powerful armed forces in Europe.  Fertility rates in the United States are currently near historic lows, largely because fewer women are having children in their 20s. As women delay starting families, many are opting for egg freezing, the process of retrieving and freezing unfertilized eggs, to preserve their fertility for the future. Does egg freezing provide women with a way to pause their biological clock? Correspondent Lesley Stahl interviews women who have decided to freeze their eggs and explores what the process entails physically, emotionally and financially. She also speaks with fertility specialists and an ethicist about success rates, equity issues and the increasing market potential of egg freezing.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca.

Wayfair, every style, every home. This past November, we were invited by the Bundesphere, the German military, to observe basic training as a squad of recruits ran punishing drills honing the skills they would need to defend against an enemy assault. Everything we are training here for could be one day real. We don't hope that, but we're preparing exactly for that. Because of the war in Ukraine? Yes, of course.

Let's get some eggs. Let's go. Let's get some eggs. More and more American women are freezing their eggs to preserve their fertility. Those are the eggs. Could egg freezing offer what previous generations only dream dreamed of the chance to put the biological clock on ice. There definitely is that TikTok clock, and I'm not ready quite yet. I think that egg freezing is as revolutionary as the pill was in 1960s and 70s. It's as revolutionary as the pill. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper.

I'm Sharon Alfonci. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Scott Pelly. Those stories tonight. On 60 Minutes. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility,

and Optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. U.S. troops have been stationed in Germany since the end of World War II, providing critical

support for our NATO ally. This month, just days after German Chancellor Friedrich Merritt criticized the war in Iran, the Pentagon announced plans to withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany, spurred by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and persistent pressure from President Donald Trump for Europe to shoulder more of its own defense, European nations are beefing up their militaries. Nowhere is the impact more profound than in Germany. Scarred by their country's Nazi past, Germans embraced pacifism after the Cold War. Defense spending collapsed to the point some soldiers were buying their own gear. But as we first reported in December, the landscape has transformed. Today, Germany is racing to re-rength.

In November, we were invited by the Bundeswehr, the German military, to observe basic training at the Munster Army base in northwest Germany. A squad of recruits ran punishing drills, honing the skills they would need to defend their position against an enemy assault. The major in charge, has been training troops since 2018. the Bundeswehr won't reveal his name to shield his identity from hostile actors. So have you seen a difference in the recruits of today versus years past? Yes, I think there's a huge difference. They know what they're here for, and it's getting more clear to them that everything we are training here for

could be one day real. We don't hope that, but we're preparing exactly for that. Because of the war in Ukraine? Yes, of course, yeah. The war in Ukraine has shaken Germany's sense of security. But the country is also shaking off the shadows of its brutal military past. This Holocaust memorial in Berlin, a stark reminder of that history, stands close by the Reichstag,

where the National Parliament is moving to restore Germany's military as Europe's most powerful force. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has overseen a 23% uptick in enlistments over last year. How is the war in Ukraine changing Germany's view of its own security? I grew up in the Cold War, and since February 22, we all experience in Germany and in Europe

that the war is back. We never expected that, and we were so hopeful, that it would never happen again, but it does. And we have to do everything to be able to deter and defend. Pistorius was appointed defense minister in 2023, almost a year after Russia's large-scale assault on Ukraine. When conservative Friedrich Mersh became chancellor last May, he kept Pistorius, the blunt-talking social Democrat in his post.

I mean, you have to be clear what you want, what you are standing for. We met him at the Bendler Block, the Berlin Building Complex, once housed the Nazis' army high command. Today, it's Germany's equivalent of the Pentagon. When we spoke with Pistorius in November, he didn't pull any punches on Russian President Vladimir's ambitions. There is not only the war against Ukraine, this is a war against the root-based international order. and at the same time he does not stop stressing what he's really longing for, like a renaissance of the Soviet Empire. He wants to be the dominant power in Europe,

and he wants to be the third of three world powers like China and the U.S. This is what he is what he is heading for. Pistorius warns Putin is rapidly rebuilding Russia's military, and he told us Russia could be in position to a position. attack the West by the end of the decade. When does Germany need to be ready for war? We should do everything to be that in 2029. This is our objective.

This is still a way to go. Three days after Russia's 22 invasion of Ukraine, then-Chancellor Olaf Schultz, told the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, the incursion marked a zeitemenda, a turning point for Europe. He announced a special, 100 billion euro fund to kickstart Germany's military building.

Three years later, in the run-up to his election as Chancellor, Friedrich Mertz said he was troubled as well by President Trump's threats to pull back from NATO. My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA. You're gambling with World War III. After this contentious Oval Office meeting with President Zelensky in February 2025, Friedrich Merritt's posted,

We must never confuse aggressor and victim in this terrible war, and he pushed Parliament to exempt defense spending from Germany's debt break, the constitutionally mandated spending cap. The money started flowing. The defense budget is projected to rise almost 80% by 2029. How big should the German military be? Germany is the third biggest economy in the world, and the biggest one in Europe, of course.

So everybody in Europe expects us to be the strongest ally in NATO in Europe. With the surge of federal funding, the long, more abundant German defense industry is springing back to life. The drones are the future of warfare. We met Sven Kruk in Berlin, He is co-CEO of drone manufacturer Quantum Systems. The company, with factories in Germany and Ukraine, landed a 25 million euro contract with the Bundesphere

to produce up to 750 intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance drones, ISR for short. We have now more than 1,500 at the battlefront day by day in use. 1,500 drones. Drones. Drones. In use in Ukraine, day by day. night by night. Drones, including quantums, have helped reshape the battlefield.

A few months after the 2022 invasion, Russian forces tried to cross the Donets River in eastern Ukraine. Explosions and smoke obscured their movements. A quantum drone equipped with a thermal camera helped Ukraine see, target and stop the advance. And this actually was our moment where everybody has seen quantum systems and especially ISR drones, can make a difference. Kruk told us Germany isn't investing enough in cutting-edge technologies. But we saw evidence the defense ministry is thinking outside the box, way outside the box. It's funding tests to see if these giant Madagascar hissing cockroaches

can be repurposed from repulsive pests to miniature battlefield assets. This is the left turn and this is the right turn. Stefan Wilhelm's fledgling startup swarm biotactics in central Germany is working with the Bundesphere to develop technology that can steer the creepy critters autonomously and send them on reconnaissance missions. He let me take control. Wow.

They're super resilient and as you can see I mean they can crawl through tiny spaces, can go up the wall into pipes like underground and rubble. You know this is really bizarre. Is it? Swarm's insect neuroscientists attach electrodes to the roaches antenna. They insist this doesn't hurt, stimulating their natural ability to navigate. The electrodes are hidden in these bug-sized backpacks, along with a battery and microchips.

They're working to shrink the technology to soon look like this. Swarm's AI-generated videos shows how they might be deployed. might be deployed, carrying cameras, microphones, and Doppler radar into war zones. Right now we're hearing that Russia is re-arming itself. I've got more tanks, more armaments. How does this compete? We have to be smarter. We have to use intelligence.

We have to use autonomy because we wouldn't have enough personnel or enough equipment if you look at what Russia produces right now. So I think this is a shift we see in the German startups. Still, Germany is placing a big bet on its biggest defense contractor, Rhein Matole, a major arm supplier to German troops in both world wars, Ryn Mottal and its subsidiaries have won a commanding share of recent government contracts. We are the fastest growing defense company in Europe at the moment. Arman Papperger has been CEO since 2013.

Pragmatic, forceful, strategic, he built Rhein Matole into a pillar of nation. NATO rearmament. Riemetal was an ammunition company. It's going from ammunition to vehicle platforms. But now we go to digitization, we go to satellite business, we go to naval business. His company's success and support of Ukraine made him the target of a Russian assassination plot. But that didn't slow him or the company down.

RynMatoll is building and expanding 13 arms factories across Europe. We educated two generations. If something happens in the world, we call Washington and Washington will help us. That changed. President Trump said it very clear. America has her own problems. The Europeans has to help themselves.

And now, with the Ukrainian-Russian war, it's very clear about that, that we have to do more. In 2024, Germany began sending its 45th armored brigade brigade, 5,000 troops to Lithuania, once brutally occupied by the Nazis. Lithuania now welcomes German troops bolstering NATO's eastern flank, Germany's first permanent deployment of a combat-ready brigade abroad since World War II. Despite the uptick in enlistments, the Bundesphere faces a manpower challenge. It wants to add about 75,000 active-duty troops to its all-volunteer force by 20,000.

35. History weighs on recruitment. The issue still sparks protests. A recent poll found an overwhelming majority of 15 to 25-year-olds would not take up arms. If volunteer numbers fall short, the government may reintroduce the draft. Soldiers we met in basic training told us they find the reluctance of their generation to volunteer troubling. I think a lot of it, that must have to do with the history of World War II? Yes, of course. Private Lassa told us he's proud to serve. Nobody wants to go to war.

But if it happens, you have to be there to defend your country. The week before we spoke to defense minister Boris Pistorius, he presided over a public swearing-in of new recruits in Berlin. Deutsche Leng, they shouted. The world hasn't heard Germany assert itself like this since World War II, but times have changed. When you talk about rebuilding the German military, there are many people who recoil at that thought. I try to explain them, if you want to live in peace, in freedom, security, with the right to go on the street and to demonstrate against or for whatever. you want, to love however to want and you to believe in any God you want, then you need to be

willing to defend it because otherwise there might be people like Vladimir Putin who will take that kind of living away from us. Hi, my name is Lloyd Lockridge and I'm the host of a new podcast from Odyssey called Family Lore. In this podcast, I'm going to have people on to tell unusual and sometimes far-fetched stories about their families. I've heard my whole life that she invented the margarita. And then we're going to investigate those stories and find out how much of it is true. He gets a patent one month before the Wright brothers. Oh, my God. Please follow and listen to Family Lore, an Odyssey podcast, available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your shows.

Fertility rates in the U.S. are near historic lows. One reason is a sharp decline over the last three decades in the number of American women having babies in their 20s. And yet there's been no chance. in women's biology or the age at which fertility declines. Unsolvable problem? Enter egg freezing. As we first reported last year, freezing embryos for in vitro fertilization IVF has been possible for decades.

But freezing unfertilized eggs was a tougher scientific challenge, used initially for patients with cancer and other conditions that threaten fertility. Egg freezing, for non-medical reasons, became an accepted practice 13 years ago, and since then, demand has skyrocketed, with hundreds of thousands of eggs now frozen raising big money, big hopes, and big questions. Could egg freezing offer women what previous generations only dreamed of the chance to put that dreaded ticking of the biological clock on ice? Early one rainy Tuesday, Kate Sonderregor came to a fertility clinic in Midtown Manhattan to undergo a minor surgical procedure to harvest and then freeze her eggs. The next morning, Hi.

Hi. At a different fertility center, we scrubbed up and met another egg freezing patient, Catherine Schneider. How are you feeling? Excited. Her doctor, Tomer Singer, had a little bit of this. singer, head of Northwell Health's fertility practice, escorted her into the OR. Let's get some eggs.

Let's go. Let's get some eggs. Egg retrieval is the culmination of an arduous process. Nearly two weeks of daily self-administered hormone injections, sometimes several a day. The shots induce the ovaries to ripen multiple follicles, the sacks that contain eggs. so that a surgeon can go in with a tiny needle and see the white end of the needle and drain the fluid in those follicles, which is then run into an adjacent embryology lab

to search for the eggs. So the patient is right around the corner. Correct. We watched as a pair of embryologists did the delicate work of maneuvering tiny pipettes under a microscope to find and isolate Catherine's egg cells in the fluid. And here are all the eggs together.

See? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Those little black balls are... Yeah. Those are the eggs. Oh my goodness. After a few hours, the eggs are put onto tiny special straws, then plunged into liquid nitrogen,

and stored in tanks at negative 320 degrees, where they will stay, possibly, for years until their owner is ready to thaw them, add sperm. And after we inject the sperm, it fertilizes. And turn them into embryos, which is effectively the second half of IVF. According to the data thus far, as with IVF, there are no differences in the health of babies born from frozen eggs. I think that egg freezing is as revolutionary as the pill was in 1960s and 70s.

It's as revolutionary as the pill. Yeah. And that changed everything, as you know. I know. Women had the option of choosing who to be with and not to accidentally get pregnant with the wrong guy. And egg freezing took it an extra level. So you don't have to have a baby at 30 because you're 30 or 35.

You can delay fertility into your 40s. You'll have women having kids in their late 40s with their own eggs that were freezing in their 20s and 30s. There's a famous painting of the young woman with tears going down her face. oops, I forgot to have a baby. That won't be true anymore. Correct. I think that we're pushing the envelope.

I'm currently 40. I froze my eggs when I was 35. The first time I did it, I was 34 years old. And the second time, I was 36. I did two cycles last year when I was 34. We spoke to a group of women about their decision to freeze their eggs. Why is it a good idea? I 100% know that I really would love to have children.

Yasmin Higbee is 30, works in consulting and has a serious boyfriend. I'll be able to enjoy these times with my partner a bit more instead of rushing to have kids, because there definitely is that TikTok clock that started, and I'm not ready quite yet. It's an insurance. I know that, you know, I'm going to be an older mother. Namitha Jacob 38, a health care administration, and strategist isn't ready yet because she hasn't found the right partner. It takes a stress away from dating. You're not pressured to find someone and settle down and get married.

You don't hear the ticking. That damn biological clock. It ticks in every woman's head. Amazing. Like it or not, says Dr. Lucky Ccon of Fertility Clinic RMA of New York, That damn clock is very real. We're born with all of the eggs that we're ever going to have, and we don't make new eggs, and we can't fix or repair them.

It's always decreasing over time. So you're born with a number? Yes. And it starts decreasing right away? It pretty much starts decreasing even before you're born. You're a fetus in your mother's womb at 20 weeks, and that's when you have the peak number of eggs, 6 to 7 million. You have eggs at 20 weeks?

Yes. And from then on, the number keeps you. going down and the eggs keep aging. So when you freeze an egg, you are stopping it from aging any further. Correct. So if you remove the egg and freeze it when you're 28, that egg is 28 years old. Yep. Until you thought.

Yes, it's incredible. Because it's not just the quantity of women's eggs that decreases with age, it's also their quality, meaning their likelihood of becoming a baby. Even at peak fertility in women's 20s, some 25% of eggs, when combined with sperm, will create embryos that are chromosomally abnormal and will likely lead to miscarriages, and the percentages rise from there. As you get to 35, that number has steadily increased to about 30 to 35% of embryos being abnormal from your 35-year-old eggs. At 37-38 years of age, 50%. That's a turning point. Things start to move more rapidly, and at 40, you're looking at 60 to 70% of embryos being abnormal. By 45, 90%. 90%. Correct.

A lot of times people think that if they've done all the right things, if they've led a healthy lifestyle, they do yoga, they've never smoked a cigarette in their lives, they feel younger than their age, and they feel like their eggs will be younger than their age. And I have to explain to them that we have no data. to suggest that you can influence your egg quality in that way, unfortunately. Is there an optimal age to freeze your eggs? Yes, your 20s, because that's when you're at your lowest possible rate of genetic errors in the embryos that result from those eggs. And you also have a lot more eggs at that age. Kate decided to freeze her eggs at the unusually young age of 22 because she's going to medical school

and know she has a long journey ahead of her. You know, education for four years, training for anywhere from four to seven years after that, and so I'm not even going to think about building a family personally until after I'm done with all of that. Younger and younger women are beginning to freeze their eggs. When I started doing egg freezing in 2012, most of the women were 40, 41, 42.

When I see patients today, most of them are late 20s, early 30s. He says there used to be a stigma, as though freezing eggs meant something hadn't worked out in a patient's life, but not anymore. It became a common thing. It's almost empowering. You come in, I'm in my 30s, I'm not ready for a baby.

I want to freeze my eggs. I'm not going to compromise on the wrong guy. Freezing eggs is expensive. A single cycle, including medication, costs an average of $12,000 to $15,000, plus another $500 to $1,000 each year for storage. To thaw and fertilize the eggs later on costs an additional $10,000. Back in 2014, Apple and Facebook made headlines when they started offering egg freezing as a covered benefit for their employees. Today, nearly half of the largest corporations in the U.S., those with 20,000 or more employees, cover egg freezing.

Our parent company, Paramount, among them. When I was job searching, it was something I was really looking for. Carissa Simic changed jobs three years ago. More and more companies started to offer it, or I was seeing it. So that was a consideration as to where you worked? Yes, absolutely. Her egg freezing cycles were covered, as were Namithas, but there's also been criticism of those company's motives. There are some people who feel that the companies do that to keep you at work so that you won't have a child and leave, not to make you happy, but to keep you at your desk.

I personally don't see it that way. When I learned about the fact that they're offering this really wonderful benefit, it made me more difficult. dedicated and committed to my company, actually. It's a good way to retain top talent. My insurance did not cover egg freezing at the time. Tina Rampino, 46, learned about egg freezing in its early days when she went for a routine doctor's visit at age 35 and got a message she wasn't expecting. My gynecologist said to me, have kids now.

You're running out of time. you can get married whenever you want to get married, but you can't have kids forever. Whoa. And I went home, and I think I cried. And I was like, what should I do? The doctor had mentioned egg freezing. And I said, you know, this is kind of scary,

but I decided to do it. Paying out of pocket, she froze 10 eggs, which she considered her backup plan. I did not have a partner. Lindsay Smithson Stanley also paid out-of-pocket when she froze her eggs at 35. A few years later, she got engaged to Paul. They want children, but not until they're married and Lindsay finishes her Ph.D. So Dr. Singer recommended thawing her 18 frozen eggs,

fertilizing them with Paul's sperm and then doing genetic testing to assess viability. Day five hatching. Which is possible once fertilized eggs grow into five to seven day old embryos. The results, Lindsay and Paul have four chromosomally normal embryos on ice waiting for them. Do they tell you the gender? We have two boys and two girls. You can't stop grinning. It's exciting.

Tina's story took a different turn. After the pandemic, still single, she decided to to become a single mother by choice and selected a sperm donor. I had just turned 40, and I knew that motherhood was something that I always wanted. Sorry, I'm like... But the first embryo created from her frozen eggs failed to implant. But then... Where's Christopher?

There's Christopher. A second embryo from her frozen eggs did. She gave birth. to a son, Christopher. He's such a happy, healthy boy. He's so playful. He loves people. On the day that I started my egg freezing cycle, I screenshotted a quote that said,

do something today that your future self will thank you for. And that is something that I think about all the time because that really was the decision that changed my life. But not every egg freezing story has such a happy ending. It was just devastating. It's really the worst thing that's ever happened to me, by far. They think they have an insurance policy that they don't have.

Does egg freezing promise young women more than it can deliver when we come back? How can working at your local Tims take you further? Sure, you can level up your teamwork skills. You also get a chance to receive a Tim Horan scholarship award. Ready for what's next? Apply today at careers.timhortons.ca. More and more American women are freezing their eggs to preserve their fertility. The number of procedures has increased more than six times over,

from 6,000 in 2014 to nearly 39,000 in 2024. Investors have taken notice, seeing a market that could one day include a significant percentage of all young American women. Venture capital and private equity firms have backed egg freezing startups and have bought up and invested in existing private and academic fertility clinics to consolidate them into giant networks. But not everyone is convinced that egg freezing is such a gift to young women. You're taking the financial cost, you're taking the medical cost, for what? For a gamble. Vardit Ravitsky is president of the Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute, and is a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School. The women we've spoken to, they're almost giddy with this choice.

They say that they're freezing the biological clock. That ticking thing is unbearable, and it's gone. I totally understand why young women are excited about it. My fear when I hear young women say I froze the biological clock is that they think this is guaranteed. They think I put a baby on ice, not my eggs, and I'm just going to go and thaw it when I'm ready to become a mother. It's not that. That's the problem. She points to stories like Evelyn Gosnells. Evelyn froze her eggs three times at ages 32, 36, and 38.

for a total of 30 eggs considered a very safe number. Did you have some level of comfort? Absolutely. Even my doctor was like, that's insane. Like, this is going to be a breeze, totally, no problem. But when Evelyn and her now fiancé Edward went to use her 30 frozen eggs, only 19 survived the thaw, an unusually poor result. Even worse, once those 19 eggs were fertilized, only one grew to be an embryo. Anxiously hoping for positive results, they sent a few cells off for genetic testing to see if the embryo was viable.

So I was at work and got this message saying, we have your test results. Before we give them to you, just confirming if you want to know the sex. Boy girl. I just started to think, oh, wow, they've asked me. if I want to know the sex, it means that there's a real embryo there. It means that this is real. It's normal. It's going to be fine. It's all going to be good. And then, boom, I get the report, and I open it, and it's abnormal, and it was a girl. There was no chance the embryo could become a baby.

Stories like Evelyn's are heartbreaking, and though rare there have also been incidents where a storage tank has malfunctioned, and thousands of eggs and embryos have been destroyed. Dr. Lucky Sikon says she explains to all her patients that frozen eggs can never be a guarantee, because just as in naturally occurring pregnancies, there is drop-off at every step along the way. She calls it an inverted pyramid.

It's like you start out with this many eggs and then this many fertilize, This many turn into embryos. This many embryos are actually genetically healthy, and this many embryos actually implant. You're taking a bet. It's a gamble that you actually need these eggs. It's a gamble that it would work.

And even if you manage to get pregnant, the older you are, the riskier it is to be pregnant. So you're taking multiple risks. You're gambling on multiple stages. But are you saying don't do it? You know, Leslie, I'm not saying don't do it. I'm saying it's probably a good option for some people, but I would like young women to really have options.

She believes that society pushes high-achieving women to get so much accomplished before they have children that they run out of time, and it would be better if they could become mothers younger. The optimal time from a biological medical perspective is in your 20s or early 30s. but the socially optimal time is later than that. So I think we're telling women, oh, in your 20s, focus on your education, your career,

finding a partner, having financial stability, relationship stability, so that when you do have a baby, you can be a responsible mother. I mean, you're making it sound as if that's wrong. It sounds pretty right to me. What's wrong with that? I think elective egg freezing sends women a message of, Okay, don't worry, we have a solution for you. Delay motherhood.

It will cost you thousands of dollars. It does involve medical risks. There's a good chance it won't work at the end, and if it does work, your pregnancy will be riskier for you and for your baby, but that's okay. We have a solution. A better solution, she argues, would be to have policies like paid parental leave, flexible hours, child care at the workplace,

to make it easier for women to have babies. younger. Who's dating? But these women told us they weren't ready to have children younger. Still active and trying to find the right person. And say they understand there's never certainty. How do they explain that it's not a guarantee? They said exactly those words. It is not a guarantee. So what are the chances of success if you freeze your eggs? A 2022 study from one, large fertility center found that 70% of women who froze at least 20 eggs before the age of 38 had a baby. But success rates dropped off considerably the older women were, and the fewer eggs they froze. Which means that many women, like Carissa and Namitha, do more than one round of egg freezing

to bank more eggs. And that brings us back to the money. Business is booming in the field of fertility, and egg freezing is a big part of it. Companies target women with catchy ads on social media, host fun events like fitness classes, even a manicure, to give women information and draw them in. What I've seen is a transition in my own field. Dr. Marcel Cedars, a fertility specialist with the University of California, San Francisco, and a past president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine

says getting women information is great, but she worries that the emphasis on profits she's seeing in private equity-backed fertility companies is creating warped incentives. Have you heard in any companies that are owned by large firms that the doctors are being pressured to encourage more cycles, encourage things,

that will lead to more revenue? I would hope it's not universal, but that is definitely occurring in some companies. How quickly do you get someone? How many cycles do you get per patient? That's how revenue is based. That's how payment and compensation is based. And so that's what the motivation becomes.

It becomes much more a business. It does. I mean, I have always bristled when I hear my specialty called an industry, And I think in the past, it wasn't, but I do think it is becoming that. And it is painful to me. Pink number 14. She also worries about the unfairness when lower-income women and those who don't work for large companies can't afford egg freezing.

Vardit Rivetsky agrees. The majority of women who freeze their eggs electively are, white and well-resourced, and there's a significant gap in your options and your reproductive autonomy if you have resources or you don't. Everyone cannot do this. Right. Poor women. I think we have a lot of work to do as a field.

We don't yet know how to properly drive down the cost. It's a very expensive endeavor. If this is being done just for someone's peace of mind. Right. Should they go through this? I think it depends on their age and attitude towards family building. If someone says to me, I'm 35, I know I want children, then yes, I think they should absolutely do this. Especially if they say I want to have more than one child, because, you know, they might be ready at 37, 38 and have no trouble at all.

But when are they going to be ready for baby number two? Stars. Speaking of baby number two, Tina gave me a baby number two. Tina gave birth to a second little boy, Christopher's baby brother, Theo, from the final embryo from her frozen eggs. See the cars? Right. Egg freezing technology, Northwell's Dr. Singer thinks,

will get better and better. Do you think that one day, virtually every young woman will do this as it would be routine? I really do think so. Once it's going to be affordable, covered by insurance, I'm a big believer that egg freezing and IVF is going to be the way our next generation will expand. I think that having timed intercourse or unprotected intercourse for reproduction is going to be falling out of favor in the next generation or so. Wait, wait. What? What? What did you just say? I said that sex is going to be for fun and for pleasure, but most likely in a generation from now, when couples want to have kids, most likely they're going to be using artificial reproductive techniques.

You'll have frozen eggs. Wait, are you saying that we won't have sex to have children? I'm sure my two-year-old will ask me, mom, dad, you had unprotected intercourse? What about chromosomes abnormalities, miscarriages, twins? What were you doing? Russian roulette? Dr. Singer thinks in the future all women will freeze their eggs

so that the only reason to have sex is for fun. I would say that. While they didn't seem entirely convinced of that, they are definitely with him on egg freezing and the need for more education. Should gynecologists talk about this when you go in and you're young? Yes.

Absolutely. Yes. I wonder why they don't. I think our health classes were always, this is how you don't get pregnant. And I think opening the conversation to this is how your body works. you know, at what age you might want to consider this if you want a family.

Knowledge is just power in this circumstance. If a woman goes to her gynecologist, do you think that doctor should introduce the subject? I think it's a good idea. I do. It's a very sensitive topic, so you have to kind of navigate it carefully. You don't want to be judgmental. Not everyone has to freeze their eggs. Not everyone has to have children. But everyone should take the moment to consider their options and really think about what they want. A piece of good news. Evelyn, whose egg freezing journey led to heartbreak, kept trying. After many more rounds of egg retrieval and IVF, she and Edward welcomed a baby girl.

Breaking down the high cost of egg freezing. The majority of women have to pay out of pocket. At 60 MinutesOvertime.com. I'm Leslie Stahl. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. I've been hearing for decades that the markets can solve climate change. Today, we have more incentives for market solutions than ever, and emissions are rising. On this season of drilled, Carbon Cowboys, the story of three market solutions colliding in one multinational boondoggle.

You got to give Bruce of the guy's credit. They're Republican kids. They don't give a bit of money. Listen anywhere you get podcasts.