Why Social Egg Freezing for Single Women Should Not Be Prohibited: A Confucian Perspective

Beginning with a recent high-profile case in mainland China, this paper argues that the current prohibition on social egg freezing for single women cannot be justified from a Confucian ethical perspective. We first explain why Confucian ethics provides a normatively appropriate and socially salient framework for evaluating reproductive policy in the Chinese context. We then articulate a theoretical model that we term Confucian familist virtue ethics. A central contribution of the paper is to distinguish between Confucian ethical ideals and its minimal standards. While the ideals-such as timely marriage and childbearing within an intact family-are properly the objects of moral aspiration and voluntary cultivation, only violations of the minimal standards warrant legal prohibition. On this basis, we develop three lines of argument to show that although social egg freezing by single women may fall short of Confucian aspirational ideals, it does not violate the ethical minimum. Accordingly, it does not justify coercive state intervention. Finally, we examine the predictive concern that permitting social egg freezing would undermine marital norms or substantially increase single motherhood. We argue that such negative effects are empirically uncertain and in principle manageable through regulatory design. They therefore fail to provide sufficient grounds for a categorical prohibition.