The Biomedicine Agency has communicated the figures for the PMA for all entry into force in August 2021: 2,000 attempts have already been made.
Since the PMA for all, medically assisted procreation, was opened to female couples and single women on August 3, 2021, only 21 babies have been born as part of this device, reveals Wednesday March 8 the Agency of biomedicine.
This is just the beginning as it took some time to set up the system at the end of summer 2021 respecting all the steps. There were the first appointments, the consultations with the future mothers, then the inseminations or in vitro fertilization. There is also the delay for a baby to be born, which is nine months of pregnancy. As of December 31, about 16 months after the start of the system, there have therefore been 21 births and there are 450 pregnancies in progress and already 2,000 first attempts.
23,000 initial consultation requests
According to these first figures put forward by the Biomedicine Agency, we feel that there is a rise in the power of PMA for all, especially since the establishment has recorded 23,000 requests for first consultation from couples of women. or single women. This is important data which has surprised all the players in the sector. The government was counting on 2,000 pregnancies per year without suspecting that the expectation of couples of women or single women would be so high.
Nearly 23,000 requests were made for sperm donation. The surprise comes mainly from single women. They are more likely than female couples to wish to give birth to a child through medically assisted procreation. And result in most fertility centers, we can not respond to such a wave, suddenly the delays are long, but they are starting to stabilize, on average 14 months between making the appointment and the first attempt at LDCs. A total of 5,600 women are awaiting ART with sperm donation.
There are certainly not enough of them, but it should be noted that donations are on the rise. This was particularly a fear of the legislators. Because now with this bioethics law, donors must agree to lift their anonymity if the child asks for it when he turns 18. It is a device that could deter donors who wish to remain anonymous. Well this is not the case, the donors are much more numerous: 760 last year, a figure twice as large as three years ago.
New centers expected
In France, 30 centers are authorized to perform ART with sperm donation, new centers should normally open, in Limoges, Orléans and Poitiers. And then it should be noted if there was an explosion of requests for assisted reproduction just after the promulgation of the law, because it was eagerly awaited by many women. These days, requests now tend to drop.
The self-preservation of oocytes has been possible since the promulgation of the bioethics law. It is the fact for women to ask to keep their gametes as long as they are young, to freeze them to be able to use them a few years later on the occasion of a pregnancy project. 11,500 women applied in a year and a half. Nearly half had a first consultation and 1 in 10 was able to have their oocytes stored. There are seven months of waiting on average with a big difficulty in Ile-de-France where it is necessary to foresee two years of waiting. Here too, at the national level, the system is increasing and vice versa, requests have tended to drop since what can be called the “law effect” after its promulgation a year and a half ago.