PMA for everyone: 23,000 single women or lesbian couples have already made an appointment

Since September 29, 2021, single women (in the eyes of the law, i.e. unmarried) and female couples finally have access to PMA in France. Until then, medically assisted procreation was only open to heterosexual couples who were infertile or who feared transmitting a genetic disease to their child.

The number of requests has exceeded all expectations and figures for the year 2022 released on Wednesday 8 March by the Biomedicine Agency show 22,800 requests for initial consultations since September 2021. Claire de Vienne, referring physician at the Biomedicine Agency, said told AFP: ” We were surprised by the scale of the requests and are now about to enter a normalization process ». These observations were reported by the newspaper The world which also reveals that between August 2021 and December 2022, 11,800 first consultations took place, as well as 2,000 first attempts at assisted reproduction.

Again according to data from the biomedicine agency transmitted by The world, as of December 31, 2022, just over 5,000 people were awaiting medically assisted procreation with sperm donation. Three-quarters (74%) were single women (38%) or female couples (36%).

A long and glittering journey threatened by the law on bioethics

Despite this openness to MAP for everyone (or almost…), couples and unmarried women have to wait a long time before being able to make the first attempts at procreation. While the stock of available male gametes varies by industry, women have to wait an average of 14.4 months between their first consultation and the start of trials. The biomedicine agency plans to open new centers to meet this demand, but, as Claire de Vienne reminds us: “All these projects are possible only if there are men who give”.

In 2021, around 600 men donated their sperm. Each donation can in theory cover up to 10 attempts at procreation, although, according to CECOS (Centre for the study and conservation of human ova and sperm) these figures are rarely reached. Currently the assisted reproduction centers have sufficient supplies thanks to old donations and those collected during the year. Despite everything, the specialized structures operate on a just-in-time basis and we still don’t know what will happen to the spermatozoa collected before the application of the bioethics law. Also under this law, children born from gamete donation will now be able to know the identity of the donor when they come of age, if they wish.

At the moment the stocks consist of chaff collected before and after the police. If the sperm used for insemination was collected before the application of the bioethics law, the donor will remain anonymous by default. Eventually, these older sequins will likely be destroyed for ethical reasons, with the risk of lengthening waiting lists, due to lack of supplies. As for the revocation of donor anonymity, it remains to be seen whether it affects the number of donations collected each year, but abroad this does not seem to be the case.