Spain guarantees right to free IVF for lesbians, transgender people

The Government of Spain has restored the right of single women and lesbians to access assisted reproductive techniques (ART), including in vitro fertilization techniques (IVF) in the National Health System. In addition, it has extended this right to transgender people with the capable of conceiving.

The Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, signed last week the Ministerial Order that specifies the modification of the criteria that includes access to ART. Since 2014 and until now, the ART were oriented to a therapeutic purpose of people with fertility disorders, to prevent the transmission of diseases or serious disorders, or to the preservation of fertility in situations associated with special pathological processes such as cancer.

The established criteria meant that women who did not have a clinical fertility disorder could not access ART or IVF techniques in the public health system. This left out women without fertility problems but who had no possibility of gestation without performing one of these techniques, such as women without a partner or lesbian women.

The new Ministerial Order guarantees the reproductive right in the public health system to women without a partner, to lesbian women and to transsexual people with the capacity to conceive a child.

Minister Darias says that the new regulation "is a milestone" based on equity, diversity and equality.

Comprehensive care

The Minister of Health underlined in a press release the "firm commitment of the Government of Spain" to advance in the training of health personnel for the comprehensive care of LGTBI people and in the "depathologization of transsexuality."

“Spain is a world reference in public health and in the rights of women and the LGTBI community”, Darias emphasized.

According to the estimates of the Ministry of Health, about 8,500 women could opt for ARH techniques within the framework of the common portfolio of services as a result of this reform.