The Affective Temporalities of Ovarian Tissue Freezing: Hopes, Fears, and the Folding of Embodied Time in Medical Fertility Preservation

Abstract

Ovarian tissue freezing is an emerging fertility preservation technique that is increasingly offered to patients whose fertility is compromised by either disease or medical treatment. At 196°C, the frozen tissue awaits the recovery of the patient offering the prospect of a reproductive future. Based on qualitative interviews with 42 Danish women who had an ovary cryopreserved before medical treatment, this chapter examines the affective and embodied temporalities constituted as ovarian tissue is frozen, stored, and transplanted. The chapter demonstrates not only the complex ways in which hope and fear entangle in preventive medicine, but also how embodied pasts, presents, and futures are (re)organised through cryopreservation and transplantation technology. Rather than conceptualising ovarian preservation as a future-oriented “hope technology,” ovarian tissue freezing extends the past into the present/future, in ways that the oocyte and embryo freezing do not. Post-disease reproduction involves the emotional management of risk, including fear of relapse. Yet, frozen ovarian tissue transplantation also holds the promise to restore the fertile, hormonal (feminine) body. It operates as a remedy to synchronise the post-cancer body with the normalising rhythms of menstruation and stands out as a joyful “suture” of pre- and post-cancer selves.