Chinese Woman Loses Legal Challenge for Right to Freeze Her Eggs
Faced with a shrinking population, China’s top leadership has tried everything to get women to have more babies. Everything, it turns out, except allowing unmarried women to freeze their eggs.
A Beijing court this week chose to uphold a longstanding rule that only married women may use the procedure. Rights activists say the rule is unfair because it excludes single women from a reproductive measure that gives them the option to put off childbirth.
The ruling centers on a lawsuit filed by Teresa Xu, against an obstetrics hospital after a doctor denied her access to egg freezing services and instead told her that she should get married and have children quickly.
On Wednesday, Ms. Xu said the Chaoyang Intermediate People’s Court in Beijing had rejected her lawsuit, exhausting her legal options in a six-year battle for reproductive rights. The court had argued that her rights were not violated.
In a livestream video, Ms Xu, 36, a freelance writer in Guangzhou, said she wasn’t surprised by the court’s decision. “I was mentally prepared for it,” she said in the video that was later posted to her social media account. “This result wasn’t all that unexpected.”
In China, the ruling Communist Party continues to have a large say over who may have children, and how many. For years, it allowed families to have only one child. As births slowed significantly, threatening growth, officials loosened the one-child policy to allow for two children and then three.
Most hospitals in China require women to be married before freezing their eggs. Single women who are pregnant are regularly denied access to public health care as well as benefits like maternity leave. And children born to single parents struggle to get social benefits such as education and medical insurance.
Yet the reasons for Ms. Xu’s decision to freeze her eggs are ones shared by many young Chinese women: She wanted to have a baby at some point, but she wanted to work and save money first, for her future.
China’s ban on access to reproductive treatments for single women has forced many women who have the financial means and the determination to travel overseas and spend tens of thousands of dollars to get their eggs frozen in countries like Thailand and Malaysia.
On the surface, the desires of Ms. Xu and other young women would seem to fit with Beijing’s own goals. Urgently trying to address a declining population, Chinese officials have tried doling out cash and subsidies as incentives for families to have more children, making in vitro fertilization and other reproductive services more widely affordable.
Nevertheless, its birthrate remains historically low — and continues to fall. Many young Chinese women say they prefer to be alone. Even people who are in a relationship are forgoing marriage and children, some because of uncertainty about the country’s prospects as its growth slows. The number of marriages in the first half of this year dropped to the lowest level in a decade, according to official data released this week.
Ms. Xu, an advocate of women’s rights, has argued that the rules around egg freezing are sexist. Men can choose to freeze their sperm with no conditions. In addition to being married, women seeking to freeze their eggs must show that they have a license to give birth to a child. They must promise not to exceed the number of children they are allowed to have, and show proof they are either infertile or are undergoing treatment that could make it more difficult for them to conceive.
In its ruling, the Beijing court said that the decision by the hospital to deny Ms. Xu egg freezing services had complied with current rules and was “consistent with laws and regulations as well as common sense.” But the court also left room for future changes that could be made to China’s fertility policy and said that “when conditions are met, Ms. Xu may resolve the relevant disputes separately.”
In her livestream on Wednesday night, Ms. Xu vowed to continue to fight for the reproductive rights of single women, saying the ruling this week was “not the end” adding that she would “actively formulate the next strategy.”
As she signed off from her livestream, she added: “We have a long road ahead of us.”
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