Cross border fertility treatment is one of the fastest growing areas of medical travel but has often been the subject of controversy and media conjecture, Lorraine Culley, Professor of Social Science and Health at de Montfort University is the Principal Investigator for Transrep, an exploratory study of cross border reproductive care. The research project was designed to explore the experiences of UK residents who travel abroad for fertility treatment and was funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council. Caroline Ratner of the IMTJ spoke to Professor Culley about the recently completed study.

What do we know about the extent to which people travel abroad for fertility treatment?

We know very little about precisely how many people travel abroad for fertility treatment. There have been a few studies internationally but the available data is somewhat speculative. There’s been a study of Canadians travelling to the USA and which also, paradoxically, showed Americans travelling to Canada.  We’ve also had in the European context a study by Shenfield and colleagues published in 2010 which discussed the extent of travel specifically within Europe. They surveyed six different countries in Europe and from that data they estimated that possibly 25,000 cycles of cross border treatment are occurring in Europe each year. However, this data has been extrapolated from a survey which had data from six countries and in many cases was incomplete. However, by all accounts it seems to be a growing phenomena and something that is on the increase. 

Why do people seek fertility treatment abroad?

There are lots of different reasons that have been suggested by academic and media commentator. Cost, availability of treatment and legal factors are among the main motivating factors. 

In many countries there are legal restrictions on the kind of treatments available, which are often a motivator for people to travel elsewhere.  For example, in some countries there are restrictions on the categories of people that are eligible for fertility treatment, such as in France where single women and lesbian couples are not allowed to have fertility treatment, so they go to Belgium. Sometimes people want to travel for embryo transfer because there are growing restrictions on embryo transfer in several European countries, and then there are potentially a number of people who want to select the sex of their child or other traits that they want to purposely seek out. Often they cannot have this kind of treatment in their home country.

Others choose to travel for the anonymous donor service that is not available in their home countries or conversely others travel because they want information about donors which might not be available in their own country.