PET PET
  • My Account
  • Subscribe
Become a Friend Donate
  • About Us
    • People
    • Press Office
    • Our History
  • Get Involved
    • Become a Friend of PET
    • Volunteer
    • Campaigns
    • Writing Scheme
    • Partnership and Sponsorship
    • Advertise with Us
  • Donate
    • Become a Friend of PET
  • BioNews
    • News
    • Comment
    • Reviews
    • Elsewhere
    • Topics
    • Glossary
    • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Previous Events
  • Engagement
    • Policy and Projects
      • Resources
    • Education
  • Jobs & Opportunities
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
    • People
    • Press Office
    • Our History
  • Get Involved
    • Become a Friend of PET
    • Volunteer
    • Campaigns
    • Writing Scheme
    • Partnership and Sponsorship
    • Advertise with Us
  • Donate
    • Become a Friend of PET
  • BioNews
    • News
    • Comment
    • Reviews
    • Elsewhere
    • Topics
    • Glossary
    • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Previous Events
  • Engagement
    • Policy and Projects
      • Resources
    • Education
  • Jobs & Opportunities
  • Contact Us
  • My Account
  • Subscribe
  • Privacy Statement
  • Advertising Policy
  • Thanks and Acknowledgements
PETBioNewsNewsPET launches egg freezing #ExtendTheLimit campaign

BioNews

PET launches egg freezing #ExtendTheLimit campaign

Published 1 November 2019 posted in News and appears in BioNews 1022

Author

Georgia Everett

Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
CC0 1.0
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.

The Progress Educational Trust (PET) has launched its #ExtendTheLimit campaign, asking the UK public to sign an online petition requiring Parliament to address the law on egg freezing time limits...

The Progress Educational Trust (PET) has launched its #ExtendTheLimit campaign, asking the UK public to sign an online petition requiring Parliament to address the law on egg freezing time limits (see BioNews 1021).

Current legislation only permits women to store frozen eggs for a maximum of ten years, unless they have medically certified premature infertility. This means that women storing eggs for social reasons are often left with a difficult choice: becoming a parent before they are ready, using donor sperm to create embryos or discarding eggs - and possibly losing the opportunity for genetically-related children.

Sarah Norcross, director of PET – the charity that publishes BioNews – said the current limit was 'a very clear breach of human rights'.

'It is an arbitrary and outdated piece of legislation that does not reflect improvements in egg-freezing techniques and changes in society, which push women to have children later in life. It curtails women's reproductive choices, harms women's chances of becoming biological mothers, does not have any scientific basis (eggs remain viable if frozen for longer than ten years) and is discriminatory against women because of the decline in female fertility with age,' she told the BBC.

Women are recommended to freeze their eggs before they are 35 years old, as the quality and number of eggs tend to decline after this point – however, the average age of a woman freezing her eggs in the UK currently is 38-years-old. 

Jane (a pseudonym), 45, froze over 20 eggs in 2009, and earlier in 2019 faced the destruction of her frozen eggs. She said: 'Being told my eggs would be destroyed was heart-breaking, heartless and massively upsetting. This was my only chance left of having a biological family. Then I got the stay of execution [ she was diagnosed with premature infertility, so her eggs can now remain frozen beyond ten years]; I wept and wept. I really feel for other women in this situation facing these terrible decisions – being forced to look at sperm donation or their eggs being destroyed; it's brutal.'

Professor Geeta Nargund, medical director of CREATE Fertility, told The Telegraph, that the ten year storage limit is 'now illogical and nonsensical' and was set 'many years ago when the risks of long-term storage of gametes and embryos were not known, and before modern vitrification, or "fast-freezing" technology was introduced'.

She also told Grazia: 'Egg-freezing methods have undergone a revolution over the last few years and the 10-year limit is holding egg-freezing back from the full emancipatory impact it could have.'

An HFEA spokesperson told the BBC: 'Whilst any change to the 10-year storage limit would be a matter for Parliament as it requires a change in law, the time might be right to look at what a more appropriate storage limit could be in future that recognises both changes in science and in the way women are considering their fertility.'

Once the petition reaches 100,000 signatures, the Government will have to debate the topic in Parliament. The online petition can be signed at https://tinyurl.com/extendthelimit.

Sources and References

  • 28/10/2019
    Progress Educational Trust
    #ExtendTheLimit – a Progress Educational Trust campaign to extend the 10-year storage limit on eggs frozen for non-medical (social) reasons
  • 28/10/2019
    Grazia
    Will Extending The Egg-Freezing Limit Help Women To Have Babies When They Want Them?
  • 29/10/2019
    Daily Telegraph
    We must smash the 10-year limit on egg freezing if we want women to be equal
  • 28/10/2019
    BBC
    Frozen eggs storage 10-year limit 'should be changed'
  • 28/10/2019
    Huffington Post
    Women Should Be Able To Freeze Eggs For More Than 10 Years, Say Campaigners

Related Articles

Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
CC0 1.0
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
News
6 September 2021 • 2 minutes read

Egg freezing ten year limit to be extended

by Jen Willows

The UK government has announced that the ten-year limit on keeping frozen eggs, sperm and embryos will be scrapped...

Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human egg soon after fertilisation, with the two parental pronuclei clearly visible.
CC0 1.0
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human egg soon after fertilisation, with the two parental pronuclei clearly visible.
News
21 May 2021 • 2 minutes read

Microfluidics system automates embryo freezing and reduces cryoinjuries

An automated embryo freezing process has been developed to reduce the likelihood of damage from freezing, or 'cryoinjuries', that can occur when the process is performed manually...

Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
CC0 1.0
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
News
26 June 2020 • 2 minutes read

Storing embryos for longer may reduce chances of pregnancy success

by Emma Bunting

The vitrification method of freezing and storing embryos is safe, but the length of time embryos are kept in storage may affect their chances of resulting in a pregnancy and successful birth...

Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
CC0 1.0
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
News
23 March 2020 • 3 minutes read

Help others to be mothers: PET's #ExtendTheLimit campaign relaunches for Mother's Day

by Catherine Hill

PET's #ExtendTheLimit petition to change the ten-year storage limit on social egg freezing relaunched ahead of Mother's Day with the key message: help others to be mothers...

Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human egg soon after fertilisation, with the two parental pronuclei clearly visible.
CC0 1.0
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human egg soon after fertilisation, with the two parental pronuclei clearly visible.
Comment
21 February 2020 • 5 minutes read

Why the UK Government should modernise the law on embryo and gamete storage

by Natalie Gamble

The Government has launched a public consultation (open until 5 May 2020) on whether the UK's maximum storage periods for eggs, sperm and embryos should be reviewed...

Image by Bill Sanderson via the Wellcome Collection, © Wellcome Trust Ltd 1990. Depicts Laocoön and his family (from Greek and Roman mythology) entwined in coils of DNA.
Image by Bill Sanderson via the Wellcome Collection, © Wellcome Trust Ltd 1990. Depicts Laocoön and his family entwined in coils of DNA (based on the figure of Laocoön from Greek and Roman mythology).
Comment
28 October 2019 • 4 minutes read

PET's #ExtendTheLimit campaign to change the storage limit for social egg freezing launches

by Catherine Hill

Increasing numbers of women in the UK are facing the stark choice of having to destroy their frozen eggs or become a mother before they are ready to do so because of an outdated law...

Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
CC0 1.0
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
News
18 March 2019 • 2 minutes read

First legal challenge to 10-year limit on egg freezing

by Martha Henriques

A group of women is bringing the UK's first legal challenge to the ten-year limit on preserving frozen eggs...

Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
CC0 1.0
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
Comment
25 February 2019 • 4 minutes read

Extending the ten-year storage limit for frozen eggs

by Salima Budhani and 1 others

The UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 requires that human gametes (eggs and sperm) and embryos collected and stored by fertility clinics be destroyed after ten years, except in cases of premature infertility. This time limit applies to wome

Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
CC0 1.0
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
News
22 February 2019 • 2 minutes read

No scientific basis for ten-year egg freezing limit, says minister

by Dr Yvonne Collins

Baroness Nicola Blackwood, junior minister for innovation in the Department of Health and Social Care has acknowledged that there is a lack of evidence to back up the current time limit on egg freezing...

Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
CC0 1.0
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
News
14 September 2018 • 2 minutes read

Freeze eggs before 35 for IVF success, says UK report

by Georgia Everett

The age at which a woman freezes her eggs has a significant impact on IVF success when they are thawed, suggests a new report by the UK's fertility regulator...

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

« Largest-ever African genome study may give disease insights

Data-Label The UK's Leading Supplier Of Medical Labels & Asset Labels

RetiringDentist.co.uk The UK's Leading M&A Company.

Find out how you can advertise here
easyfundraising
amazon

This month in BioNews

  • Popular
  • Recent
8 August 2022 • 2 minutes read

Placenta and organ formation observed in mouse embryo models

8 August 2022 • 2 minutes read

Lower hormone doses may improve IVF egg quality

8 August 2022 • 2 minutes read

Boosting muscle cell production of gene therapy proteins

1 August 2022 • 2 minutes read

First UK medical guidelines issued for trans fertility preservation

1 August 2022 • 2 minutes read

Male age has more impact on IVF birth rate than previously thought

15 August 2022 • 2 minutes read

Call to end ban on HIV-positive partner gamete 'donation'

15 August 2022 • 2 minutes read

Melanoma invades new tissues using nerve cell gene

15 August 2022 • 2 minutes read

Exceeding alcohol limits could damage DNA and accelerate ageing

15 August 2022 • 2 minutes read

Blood cell gene mutations affect mitochondria, increasing cardiovascular disease risk

15 August 2022 • 2 minutes read

Jumping gene helps immune system fight viruses

Subscribe to BioNews and other PET updates for free.

Subscribe
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • RSS
Wellcome
Website redevelopment supported by Wellcome.

Website by Impact Media Impact Media

  • Privacy Statement
  • Advertising Policy
  • Thanks and Acknowledgements

© 1992 - 2022 Progress Educational Trust. All rights reserved.

Limited company registered in England and Wales no 07405980 • Registered charity no 1139856

Subscribe to BioNews and other PET updates for free.

Subscribe
PET PET

PET is an independent charity that improves choices for people affected by infertility and genetic conditions.

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • RSS
Wellcome
Website redevelopment supported by Wellcome.

Navigation

  • About Us
  • Get Involved
  • Donate
  • BioNews
  • Events
  • Engagement
  • Jobs & Opportunities
  • Contact Us

BioNews

  • News
  • Comment
  • Reviews
  • Elsewhere
  • Topics
  • Glossary
  • Newsletters

Other

  • My Account
  • Subscribe

Website by Impact Media Impact Media

  • Privacy Statement
  • Advertising Policy
  • Thanks and Acknowledgements

© 1992 - 2022 Progress Educational Trust. All rights reserved.

Limited company registered in England and Wales no 07405980 • Registered charity no 1139856