Trans patients must be offered help on fertility, NHS is warned
TRANSGENDER patients must be given the chance to freeze their sperm or eggs on the NHS before they transition, the equality watchdog has warned.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission is threatening legal action against the health service unless it changes its ‘outdated’ policies.
A spokesman said this would ensure they could ‘ realise their right to start a family’ with their own biological children.
The organisation has given NHS officials 14 days to demonstrate that transgender patients will be offered the treatment before it launches legal action.
But critics questioned whether routinely offering fertility treatment to transgender patients was a valid use of NHS resources. It comes as a growing number of health trusts refuse to fund IVF for couples.
And egg-freezing is not usually offered on the NHS to other patients unless there are other
‘They must have equal access’
serious health issues affecting fertility – such as cancer. The NHS also rations other routine treatments including hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery and hernia operations.
Last Friday, the EHRC sent a ‘pre-action’ letter – the first step towards legal proceedings – to NHS England, the organisation which runs the health service.
It asked NHS England to enable transgender patients to freeze their sperm or eggs, a process known as ‘gamete storage’, before transitioning.
For a young woman transitioning to a man, it would involve taking high doses of stimulation drugs to produce multiple eggs which could then be frozen.
But once the surgery to transition to a man had taken place, the patient would probably not be able to become pregnant as they would no longer have female reproductive organs. They would need to find a surrogate mother to carry the child – usually via online forums.
The process for a man transitioning to a woman would simply mean freezing semen, which contains millions of sperm.
The nature of NHS England’s response will determine whether the EHRC takes further legal action. Rebecca Hilsenrath, chief executive at EHRC, said: ‘Our laws and our values protect those who seek treatment for gender dysphoria. This means that where appropriate, treatment should be made available in order to ensure that access to health services is free of discrimination.’
And Paul Twocock, of Stonewall, the charity for the equality of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people, said: ‘We welcome this challenge from the EHRC. It’s vital that trans people have fair and equal access to fertility treatment and for many that should include the option of storing of eggs or sperm before medical transition.’ Figures in June showed just one in ten Clinical Commissioning Groups offered the recommended three IVF cycles to infertile couples.
A further 4 per cent were refusing to fund any IVF at all, according to the charity Fertility Network UK.
James Price, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Taxpayers should be able to debate the merits of these new sex-change surgeries without them crowding out other life-saving treatments.’