2023-08-07 08:40:26
“We found ourselves faced with a wave of requests that we did not expect. Two years following the removal of the barriers to egg freezing, the thirty approved centers are always full. Since the entry into force of the law, nearly 11,500 women have requested “self-conservation of oocytes”, but only 4,800 have started the process and 1,778 have benefited from at least one conservation in 2022, according to figures communicated recently. by the government.
Before August 2021, this procedure was only allowed for medical reasons – for example, before cancer treatment or due to an illness that might affect a patient’s fertility. From now on, the medical reason is no longer necessary: women can ask to freeze their eggs because they are worried regarding becoming less fertile with the passing years, and they want to preserve their chances of falling subsequently pregnant, via medically assisted procreation (PMA). The law has set a double age barrier: oocyte retrieval is possible between 29 and 37 years old. Then, the woman will have until her maximum age of 45 to “thaw” her gametes and benefit from assisted reproduction.
A “traffic jam” and up to two years of waiting
Most patients are “singles who see the biological clock moving forward, and who want to relieve social pressure” and the injunction to have children, explains Dr Pauline Jaeger, from the reproductive medicine department at the hospital. Woman Mother Child of Lyon. Logically, the sharp increase in demand quickly led to overcrowding in approved public centres, and longer lead times.
So much so that some women, who want to embark on the journey a few months before their 37th birthday, must become disillusioned: in view of waiting times of up to two years, they hear themselves answering that for them, it is already too late. This “traffic jam” should have been better anticipated by the government, believes Virginie Rio, founder of the Bamp association! bringing together and advising patients engaged in medically assisted procreation (MAP) pathways.
For this activist, it would have been necessary in particular to authorize private MAP centers to practice self-preservation without medical reason, a possibility ruled out by the legislator for fear of a “commodification of women’s bodies”, when “it is only ‘a fantasy,’ she said. In the short term, the government should however evolve on this point: “new centers” will now be able to practice this activity, announced on August 2 the minister responsible for the health professions, Agnès Firmin-Le Bodo.
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