Family Law & Fertility Law Blog | Louisa Ghevaert Associates

Why we need fertility and wider law reform part III

There is increasingly a need to implement intelligent fertility and wider law reform and develop new policies and practices. The world around us is changing at pace and we must adapt to a range of powerful and inter-connected factors: declining fertility levels, fallout from the Covid-19 global pandemic, changing geopolitics, intensification of genomic, digital and AI technology revolutions.

The importance of legal parentage

The significance of legal parentage should not be underestimated. Legal parentage establishes a legal parent-child relationship in law and it confers status, as well as various important legal rights and responsibilities. It does not always follow biological parentage or birth registration. Furthermore, the law can be complex, particularly in cases involving assisted conception and modern family forms, and challenging to resolve when disputes arise.

UK fertility treatment trends: what’s next?

The HFEA’s latest data, published on 30 June 2020, paints a largely positive picture of fertility treatment in the UK in 2018 before the Covid-19 pandemic. Its main points and analysis indicate that IVF birth rates had increased for patients under 43 years and that on average, about one in every four embryos transferred in 2018 resulted in a live birth. However, the massive disruption, uncertainty and loss caused by the advent of the global Covid-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed our public and private lives.

Should I freeze my eggs or embryos?

On 30 June 2020, the HFEA published its latest report entitled “Fertility treatment 2018: trends and figures”. It shows that since 2013, the number of egg and embryo freezing cycles in the UK has increased fivefold. In 2013, just 1,500 freezing cycles were undertaken. In contrast, this increased by 523% to just under 9,000 freezing cycles in 2018. However, freezing gametes (eggs and sperm) and embryos and undergoing fertility treatment is not a panacea. It creates a wide range of legal and practical issues that need to be navigated carefully.

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