Legal and Ethical Aspects of Storage Periods for Gametes and Embryos in Europe

CeBIL seminar.

The regulation of storage periods for gametes and embryos varies considerably across Europe and raises complex ethical, legal, and social questions. This seminar is motivated by the overarching question of why storage periods for reproductive material differ so markedly across Europe, whether such time limits should exist in the first place, and, if they do, how long they ought to last from an ethical and legal perspective. It explores how different European jurisdictions define and justify time limits for the cryopreservation of reproductive material, focusing on a comparative legal analysis of Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom. Building on findings from a scoping review of the ethical, legal, and social aspects (ELSA) of gamete and embryo storage periods, it highlights that temporal caps are not merely technical measures, but normative instruments shaped by considerations of autonomy, child welfare, fairness, and administrability. The review further shows that the same rationales such as risk, clarity, welfare, or costs are invoked both to restrict and to flexibilize storage limits, revealing persistent value conflicts among the involved stakeholders.

In a third part, the seminar examines the human rights implications of storage periods for social freezing (i.e., the cryopreservation of oocytes for non-medical reasons) under the European Convention on Human Rights, particularly Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) and Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination). Time caps for social oocyte freezing may disproportionately constrain women’s reproductive autonomy and equality of access to fertility preservation.

Bio

Maria Lorenz is a third-year doctoral candidate at the Centre for Ethics and Law in the Life Sciences (Philosophy Department, Leibniz University Hanover). She holds a law degree from the University of Hanover with a specialization in medical law and insurance law. Her doctoral research examines the ethical and legal dimensions of storage periods for embryos in the context of assisted reproduction, with a particular focus on comparative legal analysis. In addition, she contributes to the EU-funded project PREFERABLE-II, where she works on ethical and legal questions surrounding telerehabilitation (and telemedicine) in the European context. During her research stay at CeBIL, Maria investigates storage period regulations from Danish and European law perspectives and engages in interdisciplinary research at the intersection of ethics, law, and the life sciences.