The legal dispute of a Chinese woman against a hospital that refused to freeze her eggs because she was single It has continued this Tuesday in a court in Beijing, after a court agreed with the medical center last July and she appealed the judicial decision.

The case dates back to 2018, when a gynecological hospital in the Chinese capital refused to grant the egg freezing service to a single woman, pseudonym Xu Zaozao, who decided to take the center to court for a “violation of their right to dignity“, but a court dismissed the case, a sentence that the woman appealed.

After the second trial, Xu, 35, has said he is “cautiously optimistic” about the sentence, which is not yet public. “As in the first trial, today’s debate centered on whether the hospital’s refusal infringed my personal rightsand we also discussed the possible infringement of my rights to my body, since my eggs are part of my body,” he explained, quoted by ‘China Daily’.

Following her legal defeat in the first instance, Xu stated that she would appeal the decision “because egg freezing services are important to single women.”

No access to assisted reproduction for single women

Since 2003, in China it is access to unmarried women is prohibited to assisted reproductive technologies, although some towns have begun to ease restrictions.

During the Two Sessions of 2020, the main annual political event in the country, a member of the Political Consultative Conference proposed granting that right to womena request that was rejected the following year by the National Health Commission, which explained that “the freezing of eggs from single women does not comply with the relevant provisions of Chinese laws and regulations.”

The Commission cited three reasons: alleged health risks, a “lack of evidence to support the practice of egg freezing technology for the purpose of delaying fertility” and a potential “abuse of the technology for profit.”

Egg freezing services were brought up again during the legislative and advisory sessions, held in March, and some experts have predicted that a easing of restrictions could be nearpartly because of low birth rates registered by the Asian country.

In 2022, China experienced an official decrease of 850,000 inhabitants and closed the year with 1,411.75 million, in contrast to the 1,412.6 million registered at the end of 2021.