After the enactment of the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy (IVE) law, specialists in fertility and family law drew attention to the legal vacuum in which there are more than 20 thousand frozen embryos that will never be implanted as unviable or because their owners do not want to carry out a new pregnancy or donate them; but they cannot be ruled out either, since there is no rule that provides for this possibility.
In this context, the IVE law could function as a new legal argument for obtaining judicial authorizations that lead to the cessation of cryopreservation, a way that at least four couples had found in Argentina to discard their embryos before the approval of the standard.
Is that, following the maxim that indicates that “who can do more, can do less”, logic indicates that if it is possible to interrupt a gestational process until week 14, it should also be possible to do with frozen embryos.
“In Argentina there are at least 40 thousand frozen embryos; half or less have a chance of being transferred because the parents want to have more children, but the rest will stay in a clinic forever “, said the specialist in assisted reproduction and director of the Valencian Research Institute (IVI Buenos Aires), Fernando Neuspiller.
Furthermore, “around 20% of those we have saved are genetically abnormal embryos that have no chance of survival,” he added.
But even in these cases they cannot be ruled out and consequently clinics are forced to sustain the expensive procedure of cryopreservation of embryos whose owners “at some point stop paying” because they cannot or do not want to face the $ 300 annual cost of maintenance, but also do not donate them to other people with fertility problems or try a pregnancy again. “For us it is an extra cost and responsibility, because I end up being the obligatory tutor,” said the obstetrician whose clinic performs 1,000 in vitro fertilization treatments annually.
The lawyer magister in Family Law Federico Notrica explained that the last bill on the protection of non-implanted embryos that contemplated the discard and donation for scientific research as two other legal destinations lost parliamentary status. Similar initiatives have been presented since 2014 and the one that most prospered obtained half a sanction from Deputies, but was never dealt with by the Senate.
“There is a legal vacuum because we have on the one hand the law 26,862 of coverage (of assisted human reproduction techniques), which when it talks about embryos says that they can be cryopreserved or donated to other couples always for procreation purposes, but nothing more”, Notrica said. “It is a debt that the new Civil and Commercial Code has, which in its transitory provisions says that a special law is required to protect the non-implanted embryo,” he added.
The lack of legislation leads to absurd situations such as the appointment of a lawyer as “guardian of embryos”, some of which even threaten the health or dignity of people. “Once, when I was practicing the profession, a couple in their 60s came to see me who for 18 years had had twins by assisted human reproduction techniques, but since she could not sleep thinking that they had cryopreserved embryos, they asked the fertility center to discard them. The only option they were given is for her to go into the hospital to transfer the embryos that, due to their age, were not going to take hold. A delirium, “said Notrica.
“If a woman can voluntarily abort, another who underwent assisted reproduction treatment must have the same right and she does not want to have more children or donate her frozen embryos,” Neuspiller said in turn. For the doctor, “it should be possible to rule out frozen embryos supported by the IVE law”, in the absence of specific legislation and by virtue of “a reasoning of pure logic”.
There are absurd situations due to lack of legislation. Some threaten health or dignity
– .
