Delay motherhood in Spain it never stops growing. More and more women are becoming mothers after 40. The growth is such that they have grown by 38% over the past decade. That is, in 2011, mothers over 40 years old accounted for 5.5%, and in 2021 this figure is 10.7%. This means that more and more people need fertility treatment, that more and more embryos accumulate in banks and therefore many of them have no clear destination, and about 60,000 frozen embryos end up abandoned.

As the average age of women giving birth to their first child increases, so does the average age of those who choose to freeze their fertilized eggs. According to the INE (National Institute of Statistics), the average age of first birth in Spain is close to 33 years.

This trend of delaying motherhood leads to women having more problems conceiving and having to seek help infertility treatment achieve your goal of becoming parents. In recent years, it has become obvious that the embryos preserved as a result of such treatment, that is, already fertilized eggs, do not stop growing, with the result that even the banks in which they are stored cannot cope with the situation.

“Onshore installations are expensive, and nitrogen to maintain adequate temperature conditions is not cheap.”

Jaime Guerrero

As he explains Independent Jaime Guerrero, Director of the Oocyte Donation and Cryobiology Program Bernabeu Instituteas soon as treatment in vitro fertilizationUsually a high percentage of fertilized eggs remains. It is true that it depends on the individual and their ovarian reserve, some achieve more, others less, but usually more than one embryo is frozen. This helps so that if they want to have more offspring or if treatment fails, patients have option B to turn to those embryos again and become parents again. The problem arises when frozen embryos don’t stop growing, they are abandoned, and thousands of them are left in limbo.

10% of frozen embryos are discarded

According to the Spanish Fertility Society, there are 668,082 frozen embryos in banks in Spain. A figure that, given the circumstances, is increasing. Of these frozen embryos, 45% are used by the patients themselves, 5% are donated to other couples, 18% are used for research purposes, and the remaining 18% are ultimately destroyed.

But of those nearly 700,000 frozen embryos 60,005 people are in a situation of abandonment. That’s 10% of cryopreserved embryos, a figure that the Bernabeu Institute considers “underestimated” and which is already causing headaches for experts who are wondering how to handle all those fertilized oocytes that no longer have an owner. “More and more embryos are being frozen, and we need to dig deeper into the logistical challenges involved in preserving them,” Guerrero says.

According to a specialist in reproductive medicine, this situation gives rise, in addition to logistical problems, significant cost. “The installations are expensive, and nitrogen to maintain adequate temperature conditions is not cheap,” says the director.

After embryos are obtained, they are frozen and stored in banks. This depends on the capacity of each fertility clinic, but some reach into the hundreds.

As Guerrero recalls, every two years clinics must renew and change the consent that specifies the location chosen for their embryos. This indicates Law on Assisted Human Reproduction Techniqueswhich assumes that if there is no response from the woman or the parent couple after two attempts, the embryos are transferred to the hands of the center.

The reasons why an embryo may be abandoned are varied. “In many cases, they ignored the embryos, some fulfilled their desire to become parents, while others could not be contacted or showed no interest in caring,” Guerrero says.

The fate of orphan embryos

It is then that specialists are faced with the problem of being unable to give a destination to those frozen embryos that no longer have a host. Guerrero explains that according to Spanish law they have four possible destinations: Using one’s own partner for future treatment, research projects, reproductive purposes for other couples, or destruction for no other purpose.

The problem is that sometimes one of these goals is not achieved because it is not meet the minimum medical requirements for donation which causes embryos to continue to accumulate in the banks.

Guerrero admits there is “some confusion when it comes to embryo disposal.” The decision is made by doctors outside the center and they must consent, but in many cases this decision is not made by fertility centers, leaving the final destination of the frozen embryos in doubt.

Many of these embryos do not match minimum requirements to donate to other couples, they cannot be used for research projects because there are almost none, but what limits fertility centers in the first place is the fear that in the future parents will demand these embryos, because of which they decide to keep them. for an indefinite period until the law clarifies this situation.