The NSW government is ditching the old law that required clinics to destroy embryos that weren't used within 10 years.
"No one should be forced to discard embryos because a time limit has passed. There is no moral or ethical reason for it," IVF Australia medical director Peter Ellingsworth told Sydney Morning Herald. He called the law "totally arbitrary," and said his medical clinic wrote letters to the health department yearly on behalf of families looking for an extension.
The time limit on the embryos was apparently confusing to some families because the clock started ticking under the law from the time sperm was donated - not when the embryo was created, Jenni Millbank, University of Technology researcher, told SMH citing a survey she conducted of 350 women.
"There was massive confusion. People would be halfway through their IVF cycles and the clinic was saying 'oh no, you can't use it'. They were incredibly distressed about it," she told SMH.
The law was recently overturned. Now, parents who froze embryos in 2010 to the present will be exempt from this law.
One woman, identified only as Jessica, 34, gave birth to her first child with an embryo she froze at Fertility First - but it wasn't that simple. She told SMH she had to write to the Department of Health to request an extension of the time limit to use the embryo in her treatment.
"It felt a bit rough to plead for something that was my own human tissue," she told SMH.
More than 120,000 frozen embryos are in storage in Australia, reported SMH. Couples are charged about $300 a year in storage fees.
