Women denied babies they long for by ‘senseless sell-by date’ on their frozen eggs
THE frozen eggs of women who are desperate to become mothers are being destroyed because of an ‘appalling and unjust’ law limiting how long they can be stored.
Women started to freeze their eggs about a decade ago for socalled ‘social’ reasons, fearing they would become infertile before they had met ‘Mr Right’.
As the law stands, eggs that are stored for this reason have to be destroyed after ten years has expired – even though the cells themselves do not deteriorate.
By contrast, eggs that have been frozen because women have an underlying medical issue, such as infertility due to cancer treatment, can be kept for up to 55 years.
Now, Britain’s top fertility doctors have launched a campaign to scrap what they say is a ‘cruel’ and ‘outdated’ law that could affect hundreds of women.
They say it is leading to the ‘heartbreaking’ situation of women having their eggs discarded simply to comply with a faulty law. When their eggs are lost, so too are their chances of bearing their own genetic child.
Within a few years, hundreds of women will face the same prospect as egg-freezing has become rapidly more popular, fear the medics.
They say the rule is also having the perverse effect of deterring women from freezing eggs in their most fertile years – their 20s.
The medics have been joined by campaigners who have just launched a parliamentary petition.
Last night, gynaecologist Peter Bowen-Simpkins, executive medical director of the London Women’s Clinic, said: ‘We have women being told they have to destroy their eggs. It’s just appalling.
‘It seems totally unjustified to allow one set of women to keep their eggs for 55 years and tell another group – who have perfectly good reasons for storing their eggs – they can only keep them for ten.’
Dr Gillian Lockwood, medical director of IVI Midland fertility clinics, said the ten-year limit was ‘arbitrary and cruel’.
Frozen eggs did not ‘go off’, she said, explaining: ‘Whether an egg is frozen for ten days or 20 years make no difference to its integrity.’
The 2009 regulation was drawn up when most women who froze their eggs did so because of underlying premature infertility, she said, typically due to cancer treatment.
Since 2010, egg-freezing has grown six-fold in popularity, with the number of freezing ‘cycles’ at UK clinics increasing from 200 to almost 1,200 in 2016. While there are no official statistics on the split between ‘medical’ and ‘social’ reasons, embryologist Alison Campbell, of Care Fertility, said ‘around 75 per cent’ of egg-freezings at its clinics were now for social reasons.
Dr Zeynep Gurtin, of the London Women’s Clinic, said women who pioneered social egg-freezing around a decade ago were now hitting the legal wall. She said: ‘We have already witnessed the heartbreaking situation of one woman’s eggs having to be discarded, against her wishes, and we have 19 more patients facing a similar situation.’
She added: ‘It’s very troubling that women’s precious eggs are being discarded against their will.’
Mohammed Taranissi, of the Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre in London, said eggs from several of his patients had been destroyed as well.
Some have applied to take them abroad but he said the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which regulates fertility treatment, had ‘insisted’ they did so at least six months before the legal expiry date.
Professor Adam Balen, former chairman of the British Fertility Society, described the law as ‘nonsensical’. ‘Ideally a women is in her mid to late-20s when she freezes her eggs, which means she would need to use them in her mid to late-30s under the current law.’
The HFEA was asked to comment but a spokesman said it was for the Department of Health and Social Care to respond. A DHSC spokeswoman said: ‘There are no plans to reconsider this legislation.’
It is very troubling that precious eggs are being discarded against these women’s will
DR ZEYNEP GURTIN OF THE LONDON WOMEN’S CLINIC