HIV fertility rights, explained
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act was approved by parliament in October. (Getty)
Just two months prior to World AIDS Day (December 1), people living with HIV in the UK won the right to donate their sperm or eggs to their partners.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act was approved by parliament in October, removing what the National AIDS Trust (NAT) said was an “unjust, homophobic, and unscientific barrier” that has “prevented both people living with HIV who are LGBT+, and anyone seeking to donate eggs to an HIV negative person, from becoming parents through fertility treatment”.
They now have the same access to fertility treatments as everyone else.
Adam Freedman, a Policy, Research, and Influencing manager at NAT, told Pink News that the updated law has made “people’s dreams come true”.
“People that thought when they were diagnosed with HIV that they were never going to be able to have children or families that were biologically linked to them, now are able to,” he explained.
“Before this ban was lifted, the vast majority of people living with HIV were not allowed to access fertility treatment which meant that, if those people needed surrogacy or they needed to donate sperm or eggs or receive a donation, they were not allowed to do so.”
But there was a loophole that allowed heterosexual couples where one partner has HIV to donate their sperm or eggs to each other, but this was not an exception afforded to same-sex couples in a similar situation.
The ban was introduced in 2007, at a time when HIV was not as well-researched as it is today and it was not known that an undetectable viral load means that the disease is not trasmittable.
“It was assumed that someone with HIV were somehow ‘dirty’ or ‘diseased’ and that it wasn’t ok for them to have children because there was an infection risk. This, of course, was totally not true,” Freedman said, adding it was hard work to remove “deeply ingrained stigma” surrounding HIV.
The lifting of the ban means equity for all people living with HIV, opening up “a whole new set of possibilities for family creation”.
“Most people living with HIV can live long, happy, healthy, normal lives. They’re no different to anyone else,” Freedman said, adding that the laws that “stigmatise them are wrong” now that the science around HIV has changed.
“These are just people like anybody else.”
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