No more anonymous gametes: from now on, people born by medically assisted procreation will all have access to their origins. Sperm donation numbers up sharply, but still insufficient

• March 31, 2025 is a pivotal date in the history of assisted reproduction in France, as it marks the full implementation of the right of access to origins for people conceived by medically assisted reproduction with third-party donors from this date onwards. One of the new rights enshrined in the Bioethics Act takes effect for all unborn children.
• Since its promulgation, the law has been well received by gamete donors, with an increase in the number of candidates for sperm donation in 2024 and a stock of over 100,000 new sperm straws accumulated since 2022.
• Donors must continue to be mobilized in order to meet all requests and maintain fair access to gamete donation AMP.
• Activity in assisted reproduction with sperm donation has increased 8.5-fold compared with the period preceding the 2021 bioethics law.
• MPA with sperm donation and gamete self-preservation continue at a steady pace.

"This reform is a crucial step towards respecting the rights of individuals and ensuring better management of requests for medically assisted procreation. It is part of a global approach aimed at modernizing and humanizing medical practices, by placing the needs and rights of patients at the heart of our concerns," declare Catherine Vautrin and Yannick Neuder.

Since September 2022, this new right, enshrined in the latest bioethics law of August 2, 2021, has been gradually implemented:

• As soon as the law was passed, each new gamete donor had to consent to giving access to his or her identity and/or non-identifying information (reasons for donation, physical characteristics, age, etc.) to people born from their donation who would request it when they came of age.
• To enable the new stock of gametes to be built up, and to optimize the use of gamete stocks built up in the past under the anonymity regime, the decree of August 16, 2023 introduced a transition period and set March 31, 2025 as the date from which only gametes for which donors have consented to the transmission of their non-identifying data and the communication of their identity may be used for an attempt at medically assisted procreation.
• At the same time, a Commission d'Accès des Personnes nées d'une Assistance Médicale à la Procréation avec tiers Donneur (CAPADD) has been set up to deal with all requests from people born from gamete donation, and to question anonymous donors to obtain their consent to the transmission of this information. As of January 31, 2025, this ad hoc commission had registered 701 admissible requests for access to origins from people aged 33.5 on average.

In anticipation of the March 31, 2025 deadline, the Agence de la biomédecine has worked in partnership with healthcare professionals at donation centers to pool the use of anonymized sperm straws between different establishments.

By 2024, 13 donation centers were able to pool more than 10,000 sperm straws to help ensure more equitable care across the country during this transitional period, while respecting the maximum number of ten births per donor. By the end of December 2024, over 200 pregnancies were in progress as a result of the pooling of these straws.

Today, of the stock of over 100,000 straws from former anonymous donors recorded at the end of December 2022, less than 30,000 remain, the majority of which are unusable because the threshold of 10 births per donor has been reached, or because they do not meet current quality criteria enabling them to be used for intrauterine insemination.

Over the same period, the mobilization of new donors who have consented to access to their identity and non-identifying data has enabled a new stock to be built up from 2,177 donors, with more than 100,000 sperm straws at the end of December 2024. Based on current activity levels, this stock corresponds to around 2 years' worth of requests for PGM with sperm donation.

On March 31, the Agence de la biomédecine also unveiled the latest 2024 figures from its activity monitoring survey of gamete donation and self-preservation centers across France.

Overall, activity in medically assisted procreation with sperm donation increased 8.5-fold compared with the period preceding the 2021 Bioethics Law, with almost 47,000 requests recorded from unmarried women and female couples. In 2024, 8,042 first consultations for MPA with sperm donation involved female couples and unmarried women. This number was slightly down on 2023 (-6% between 2023 and 2024), when 8,569 first-time consultations were recorded.

In 2024, the number of punctures and inseminations, up sharply since 2022, continues to rise:

• Nearly 4,760 first attempts recorded in 2024 for female couples or unmarried women. The total since 2021 is 12,100.
• Nearly 13,350 punctures and inseminations (whatever the rank of the attempt or child project) were carried out in 2024, compared with nearly 12,100 in 2023, marking an increase of over 10% in 2024.

More than 10,600 women were waiting for MPA with sperm donation on December 31, 2024. This figure is significantly higher than at the end of 2023 (nearly 7,600).

This waiting list is made up of :

• 45% unmarried women,
• 38% of women in a couple with a woman;
• 17% women in a couple with a man.

• OnDecember 31, 2024, the average waiting time for PGD with sperm donation (from appointment to first attempt) was 17.7 months nationwide (compared with 15.5 months in 2023).

• More candidates for sperm donation, but the number of donors is not growing as fast as the number of requests

In terms of gamete donors, the number of candidates for sperm donation was 1,045 in 2024.

The total number of donors in 2024, which will be validated on the basis of the clinical and biological investigations carried out on all candidates, should be higher than the number of donors registered in 2023 (676 in 2023). These are very encouraging figures, even if the number of donors needs to be maintained at a high level in order to meet the massive demand.

At the end of 2024, the number of couples and unmarried women on the waiting list for MPA with oocyte donation was 2,770, up from 2,430 in December 2023. This list is made up of :

• 86% male/female couples ;
• 11.7% unmarried women;
• 2.3% female couples.

The average turnaround time, from initial appointment to first attempt, remains stable compared with 2023. At December 31, 2024, it averaged 24 months nationwide (23 months in 2023).

929 women were candidates for oocyte donation in 2024. On average over the period 2021-2024, the number of donors will remain stable at over 900 per year. However, the Agence de la biomédecine notes that the number of donations is still insufficient to meet growing demand.

The 2021 bioethics law provides for the possibility of gamete self-preservation without medical conditions and without the condition of donating part of the gametes to a third party. In total, almost 42,300 requests for an initial consultation for oocyte self-preservation have been submitted since the law came into force.

Since 2021, the number of requests has risen steadily each year, from 1,460 between October and December 2021 to 15,550 in 2024. On the other hand, the number of first consultations has stabilized compared with 2023, which probably corresponds to a ceiling on the number of consultations that can be handled by the centers: 6,510 registered in 2024, compared with 6,360 in 2023.

The average waiting time for treatment is on the rise, rising from 10 months nationally in 2023 to 13 months in 2024. The Agence de la biomédecine also notes that 54% of requests are registered in Île-de-France.

As regards the profile of women received for a first consultation :

• 3% were 29 years old;
• 39% were aged between 30 and 34;
• 59% were aged between 35 and 37.

In 2024, 5,127 people benefited from non-medical oocyte self-preservation.

CAPADD key figures: Sept. 1, 2022 - Jan. 31, 2025

Of the 701 admissible applications registered, the commission sent 512 replies to applicants, broken down as follows:

• 274 responses in which the commission was able to identify the donor, i.e. more than 1 response out of 2 (46%) ;
• 238 other cases where the commission informed the applicant of the information available to it (e.g. absence of donor identification from existing archives).

The 274 responses in which the commission was able to identify the donor thanks to searches carried out by doctors and health professionals at the 29 donation centers contacted included :

• 73 responses informing applicants of the IDs and/or DNIs listed in the Donation Register held by the Agence de la biomédecine ;
• 65 responses announcing the donor's death ;
• 66 responses announcing that the donor had refused to give consent;
• 65 responses announcing that the donor had not responded to the commission's requests;
• 5 cases in which the donor had given his consent, but ultimately decided not to complete the process, and the donation register held by the Agence de la biomédecine was not completed.

Of all requests, 10 concerned oocyte donation. The other requests concerned sperm donations.