In an Instagram post, Cofertility presented Yuchen Tu as a highly promising candidate for free egg freezing, based on factors such as her age and gender. A conservatory-trained viola player, science fiction enthusiast, and U.S. Army Reserve Officer Training Corps applicant from Chongqing, China, Tu is rigorous, ambitious, and intensely self-disciplined. Then, shortly after her 24th birthday, she began to wonder whether she might qualify for complimentary fertility preservation.
Tu goes by Sue, a name she likes because it reminds her of the 2024 body-horror film The Substance, in which the protagonist pursues youth and beauty at an extreme cost. To prequalify for free egg freezing, Sue only had to complete a two-minute quiz. “Not everyone can pass this test,” she remembers thinking. “It felt like a competition.”
Sue passed, joining thousands of young women drawn to Cofertility’s promise of no-cost egg freezing. The company’s message—that “the best time to freeze your eggs is when you don’t have much money”—is echoed by its public face and CEO, Lauren McClar, a former Uber employee. Cofertility was founded to help women like Sue, who had recently completed a master’s degree in classical music and was preparing to pursue a second bachelor’s degree, preserve their future fertility without paying upfront.
However, health care in the United States is rarely free. Instead of paying for egg freezing—the procedure can cost approximately $18,000 in New York City, where Sue lives—she would use a resource she already had: her eggs. Under Cofertility’s egg-sharing model, customers agree to “donate half of their collected eggs to intended parents who require the help of an egg donor to have a baby.” Although egg sharing was not widely commercialized in the United States until recently, the Los Angeles-based company, founded in 2022, describes itself as a “new kind of human-centric fertility ecosystem.”
Sue explored Cofertility’s website, moving through screens filled with deep teal, optimistic light green, steady purple, and urgent orange. Soon after completing the quiz, she was invited to a meeting. Within days, she spoke by video with an employee who enthusiastically described how egg freezing could help Sue plan for her future while keeping open the possibility of having children. During the Zoom call, the employee noticed a piano in the background and asked whether Sue could record a performance—an idea apparently intended to appeal to prospective parents hoping to raise a musical prodigy.
Sue found the request absurd. Anyone who had reviewed her file should have known that her instrument was the viola, not the piano. She declined and remembers sensing disappointment from the employee. The exchange felt “strange,” she says, combining intense enthusiasm with an overly sweet tone. Still, Sue remained curious about Cofertility and the rapidly expanding fertility industry—something a 24-year-old might not need for many years, if at all. On July 29, 2025, Sue signed a contract with Cofertility.
Years of pressure Reproduction has increasingly become a form of biohacking wrapped in feminist language. Career-focused young women who have no immediate plans to become mothers—and no clear reason to doubt their ability to conceive—are being told that preserving their fertility now is the best way to avoid missing out on motherhood later. “Three in five Gen Z women are concerned about their fertility,” McClar said on a podcast last year, citing one source. An investigation by a network of California fertility clinics found that the oldest members of Gen Z are now approaching 30.
Source: www.wired.com