Fertility hope as ten-year egg freezing limit may go
‘A heart-breaking decision’
A CONTROVERSIAL time limit that means women can only keep their frozen eggs for ten years could be overturned.
As increasing numbers of women choose to delay motherhood, the Department of Health and Social Care is considering whether to allow them to store their eggs for longer.
Currently, after ten years, they must be used in fertility treatment or be destroyed. The only exceptions are for cancer patients and prematurely infertile women, who are allowed to keep their eggs for up to 55 years.
The new Government consultation will consider allowing women who freeze their eggs for ‘social reasons’, typically because they have not met Mr Right, to keep them for longer.
The practice is becoming more popular. Treatment cycles with frozen eggs rose from 410 in 2012 to 1,462 in 2017.
Campaigners and fertility experts have argued that forcing women to use eggs within ten years is ‘arbitrary’ and has no scientific basis.
Women who freeze their eggs when they are younger, ideally under 35, are more likely to fall pregnant if they use them for IVF at an older age.
But many are put off by the ten-year time limit, and in 2016 the average age of those opting to do it was 38.
The Government will look at whether women are ‘disproportionately affected’ by the current rules.
But there are concerns about women having babies late in life and donating eggs to their daughters.
Announcing the consultation, which will also consider the ten-year limit for frozen sperm and embryos, care minister Caroline Dinenage said: ‘A time limit can often mean women are faced with the heart-breaking decision to destroy their frozen eggs, or feel pressured to have a child before they are ready.’
Sarah Norcross, director of Progress Educational Trust, which has campaigned to change the limit, welcomed the move. ‘Extending the ten-year storage limit will enable women to exercise reproductive choice, freeing women from the shackles of an outdated, discriminatory and unscientific law,’ she said.
But Geeta Nargund, of IVF company Create Fertility, warned: ‘This could result in unintended consequences, such as women having children when it may have a negative impact on their health and the long-term welfare of the child.
‘It could also open up the potential for women to donate eggs to their children, which is a complex ethical issue.’
Sally Cheshire, chair of regulator the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, said: ‘The time is right to consider what a more appropriate storage limit could be that recognises both changes in science and in the way women are considering their fertility.’