“It’s a security, but I almost didn’t have the right to it”explains this psychologist from Lyon (who prefers not to give her name), and who says she has “had an incredible chance” because she managed to have her eggs collected and frozen in regarding four months… a process completed two weeks before the fateful date of her 37th birthday, the age limit set by law.
She had to go several times to a specialized center located hundreds of kilometers from her home, the only one that was kind enough to welcome her in time.
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 that they want to preserve their chances of getting pregnant later, 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” its gametes and benefit from assisted reproduction.
In two years, the success of this procedure has been dazzling: since the entry into force of the law, nearly 11,500 women have applied “of oocyte self-preservation”but only 4,800 have started the journey and 1,778 have benefited from at least one conservation in 2022, according to figures recently released by the government.
“We found ourselves faced with a wave of requests that we did not expect”, acknowledges Dr. Pauline Jaeger, from the reproductive medicine department at the Woman Mother Child Hospital in Lyon. 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 this specialist.
“Traffic jam”
Logically, the sharp increase in demand quickly led to a congestion of the thirty specialized public centers authorized to carry out this procedure in France.
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 are told that for them it is already too late.
This is what happened to Mélanie Trivalet, 38: for lack of taking steps in France “at least six months” before the age limit, this employee of a humanitarian NGO finally had to resolve to go to Spain and pay 3,000 euros to have her eggs frozen.
“The door was closed to me in a rather terrible way”is indignant the young woman, who regrets a lack of information on the actual deadlines to be taken into consideration.
Cet “traffic jam” should have been better anticipated by the government, believes Virginie Rio, founder of the association Bamp! 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 ART centers to practice self-preservation without medical reasons, a possibility ruled out by the legislator for fear of a “commodification of women’s bodies”while “it’s just a fantasy”according to her.
In the short term, however, the government should change 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.
As for Nina, scalded by the stressful process she has just experienced, she now wants to be cautious, and anticipates what will happen next: although “not yet fully decided” to have a child on her own, as a precaution, she began the process of obtaining assisted reproduction. Which, given the waiting times, might only take place in two years.
