The opinion of the National Consultative Ethics Committee in favor of the opening of medically assisted procreation for all women will stir public opinion. If the homosexual community, in particular, and the women who perform MAP abroad, applaud, others wonder about the family environment that is offered to these children.
In specialized clinics in northern Spain, 50% of French patients are single women or in homosexual couples.
In France, medically assisted procreation (PMA) is only accessible to heterosexual couples married, in civil partnership or in cohabitation, only if one of the members is infertile or carrying a serious disease and transmissible to the spouse or to the child. Precise, French legislation is no less strict. But the situation could change.
The National Ethics Consultation Committee (CCNE) has just proposed in an opinion to open assisted reproduction to all women who wish to do so, in a couple or single. And even if the CCNE denies it, the reflection started on this observation: the French women carry out more and more a MAP in the countries where it is authorized, like Belgium or Spain. “Of course, what happens abroad has played a role, but we felt that it was necessary to conduct an independent reflection”, declared Frédéric Worms, one of the rapporteurs of CCNE.
A quarter of single women
Between 2012 and 2016, more than 4,600 French women visited the Spanish clinics of the IVI network, the largest in Spain, for example. They represent a quarter of its foreign patient base, France being the most represented country. In 2016, they were still 1,600.
While the network does not compile statistics on the sexuality of its clients, its managers know the status of accompanying persons, which makes it possible to estimate a profile of these women. Thus, out of all of its clinics across the territory, 73% of clients are in a heterosexual couple, 22% are single women, and 5% are accompanied by a partner of the same sex.
Unsurprisingly, clinics near the border (Barcelona and Bilbao) are the most frequented, along with those in Madrid and Valencia. On the Barcelona side is also the most visited clinic by French women: the Eugin clinic. She drew a more precise portrait of her patients.
20% of homosexual couples
In one in two cases, the women who go there are in a heterosexual couple, and are on average 41 years old. But one trend is on the rise: that of single women. Between 2015 and 2016, their number increased by a quarter (+ 24%), to now represent 30% of the patient population.
In this establishment, women in homosexual couples represent 20% of French women who cross the border for an assisted reproduction.
For nearly half of these women, whom the desire to have a child pushes to cross the Pyrenees, the opinion of CCNE could change everything. It remains to be seen whether the new law will provide reimbursement for these women. The CCNE indeed recommends a reflection on the terms of reimbursement of these medical acts: it could be “refused or differentiated”, according to the cases. These clinics could then play on the prices to continue to attract them.
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