Enabling Reproduction: IVF Legislation In The Kingdom Of Bahrain

Assisted reproductive ('AR') technologies, including in vitro fertilization ('IVF') to overcome infertility, are now widely available across the Middle East.

Since the 1980s, IVF and other forms of AR technologies have rapidly globalised and have become more readily available in the region. Today, the Middle East is host to a booming and high-tech AR industry. Egypt alone boasts more than fifty IVF clinics and Turkey tops the list with more than one hundred clinics. The United Arab Emirates ('UAE') is home to more than a dozen IVF centers, including two supported by the UAE government. This is due, in part, to the enthusiastic reception that these technologies have received from Islamic religious authorities, which have ruled for medical developments to overcome human suffering and inability. Islam is known for being pronatalist with its promotion of birth and family creation, and inspiriting the pursuit of medicine and science for peaceful means. The emergence of new AR has also led to increased bioethical discussions regarding how these technologies should be used.

In keeping up with demand for assisted reproductive services and the development of AR technologies, the Kingdom of Bahrain enacted Law No. 26 2017 On Using Medical Techniques That Assist In Intrauterine Insemination ('IUI') and In Vitro Fertilization ('IUI-IVF Law'), which sets out clear regulations on the use of IVF and IUI techniques.

Since its breakthrough with the birth of the world's first test-tube baby, Louise Brown in 1978, there has been rapid development of AR related to IVF, which includes:

intracytoplasmic sperm injection ('ICSI') to overcome male infertility; intrauterine insemination; test-tube babies; third-party reproductive assistance (with donor eggs, sperm, and embryos) to overcome problems of poor gamete quality; gestational surrogacy to help women who are unable to carry a pregnancy in their own uterus; cryopreservation (freezing) and storage of unused sperm, embryos, eggs, and now ovaries; mitochondrial transfer from a healthy human egg to the diseased egg of another woman; preimplantation genetic diagnosis ('PGD') to determine whether embryos have genetic defects, to select embryos of a specific sex, or to select embryos that can grow into 'savior siblings' through the donation of their umbilical cord blood; and human embryonic stem cell ('hESC') research on unused embryos for the purposes of therapeutic intervention. Do's and Don'ts

The IUI-IVF Law has...