France's health ministry has announced new measures to meet the ever-increasing demand for sperm and the freezing of eggs, two years after France extended the right to medically assisted reproduction to all women.
During a visit to a fertility clinic in the northern French town of Amiens on Wednesday, France’s deputy minister responsible for health professionals, Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, announced the creation of more centres authorised to receive and store donations of eggs or sperm to cope with growing demand.
In the long term, the idea is to spread the services across France instead of having them concentrated in the central Paris region, and thus reduce waiting times.
On 2 August 2021, France revised its bioethics law to allow lesbian couples and single women to freeze their eggs or receive sperm donations.
Until then, assisted reproduction was only open to heterosexual couples, forcing others who wanted to have biological children to go to fertility clinics abroad.
Long wait
According to France’s ministry of health, in 2022 there were 15,100 initial requests for donations made by lesbian couples and single women.
That was 7.5 times higher than the number made by heterosexual couples, which stood at the stable figure of 2,000 in 2022.
"This is proof that a change to the law was needed," Firmin Le Bodo said.
With the waiting time for donations in France around 14.4 months on average, the minister announced that the number of centres authorised to freeze women’s eggs would be increased in the coming years.
"Today there are around 40 centres and we’d like to increase this number by 25 percent," Firmin Le Bodo said.
In 2022, 11,500 women had sought an appointment to freeze their eggs, health authorities reported. Of these women, 4,800 have started the process.
By the end of 2022, there were 444 ongoing pregnancies (more than 12 weeks) and 21 births for female couples and single women resulting from assisted reproduction with sperm donation since August 2021.
Deadline for 'anonymous' sperm stock
The bioethics law also includes a clause for lifting the anonymity of donors, an issue that the minister said had created numerous tensions.
As of September 2022, donors of sperm, eggs and embryos must consent to their identity being revealed if the child born from their donation wishes to know.
This request can be made once the child reaches 18 and is handled by a special commission within the health ministry. Other details such as age, profession and motive for donation can also be obtained.
Firmin Le Bodo announced a deadline of 31 March 2025 for destroying frozen sperm previously collected from anonymous donors. From 1 April 2025, only sperm donated since September 2022 will be permitted for use.
As of March 2023, there were 89,000 samples of "old stock" collected before September 2022, according to the national biomedical agency. Between 1 September and March 2023, there were 27,000 new samples.
Firmin Le Bodo said a special task force would be set up to "distribute the remaining samples to donation centres in need of replenishing stocks", so as not to waste them.
Mikaël Agopiantz, the coordinator of an agency in charge of assisting with the process of medically assisted procreation in the city of Nancy, welcomed the news.
"2025 is a good date, neither too close nor too far away, and will help centres adapt to the new rules and use up their stock," the gynaecologist told Le Monde newspaper on Wednesday. "It would be unacceptable to destroy samples," he says.
'Two sets of rules'
Adèle Bourdelet, president of the France AMP national federation of associations for donor-conceived children, is concerned the change to the anonymity rules will result in disparities.
"Parents are under two different sets of rules, which is creating difficult situations," she told Le Monde.
Some donor-conceived individuals won't be able to find out the identity of their donors because they gave sperm prior to September 2022, unless the donor now agrees to their request, she explains. Meanwhile those in the future will be guaranteed access to the donor's information.
Virginie Rio, president of another support group called BAMP, wants to see both groups on an equal footing when it comes to accessing information about donors.
"The government should have anticipated this better," she says.
Private clinics left out
Despite the decision to lift anonymity, the number of donors has not gone down.
The French health ministry said there were 760 sperm donors in 2022, compared to 600 in 2021.
The government allocated €7.3 million to fertility clinics in 2021 to handle the increase in demand, and €5.5 million was earmarked for centres receiving sperm donors and storing frozen eggs in 2022.
Agopiantz says the government needs to go further and authorise more centres to carry out the procedures, including private ones. According to him, around 100 private clinics in France are still not eligible to carry out all the steps in the assisted reproduction process.
