Campaign calls for law change to stop women's frozen eggs being thrown away

Campaign: experts are calling on a change of law to stop women having frozen eggs destroyed
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Kiran Randhawa1 May 2018

Fertility experts have launched a campaign calling on a change of law to stop thousands of women having their eggs destroyed.

Leading doctors and scientists say the current 10-year limit on storing eggs is “arbitrary” and imposes a “non-biological clock” on women wanting to have children.

Women opt for egg freezing in the hope of having them fertilised and re-implanted in the future via IVF.

Latest figures from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority reveal there were 1,173 egg freezing cycles in the UK in 2016, compared to just over 200 in 2011.

Women opt for egg freezing in the hope of having them fertilised and re-implanted
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One leading fertility clinic, the London Women’s Clinic, has seen a huge hike in women freezing eggs, from just six cycles five years ago to 229 last year.

According to current legislation “social” freezing is only be permitted for a decade. Whereas those who freeze their eggs for health reasons, for example if a women is going through chemotherapy, may have them preserved for 55 years.

The HFEA data does not record the reasons for egg freezing but anecdotal evidence from clinics suggests social reasons is the main reason for the increase.

Joyce Harper, Professor of Human Genetics and Embryology at the Institute for Women’s Health, University College London, who set up the campaign, said: “Ideally a woman would be freezing her eggs in her 20s before fertility rapidly decreases in her 30s.

"But if we urged women who are thinking about egg freezing to do this by the time they are 25, under the current law they would have to use them by 35.

"So if a woman decided she wanted to have a baby at 38, the good quality eggs she froze in her mid-twenties would have been thrown away.

“We are asking for a change in the law to give women that chance of having children in their late 30s, early 40s if they so wished using the best quality younger eggs they would have produced in their 20s.”

The limits were introduced in 2008 when the risks of long-term storage were unknown. But since then a new method of freezing called vitrification has been introduced in which eggs can be frozen without deteriorating for an indeterminate length of time.

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