Over 217,000 children have been born in Italy through medically assisted reproduction (MAR) since the approval 20 years ago of legislation regulating fertility treatment, the Italian National Institute of Health (ISS) said on Friday.
The number of treatments carried out each year has doubled, as have pregnancy rates, and procedures using cryopreserved embryos have also risen sharply, according to data collected by the National Registry of Medically Assisted Procreation, established at the ISS by Law 40/2004 regulating assisted fertility in Italy and which began its activities in 2005.
The figures have been released to mark the 20th anniversary on February 19 of the approval of the law, which was drafted by the then centre-right government and voted by some centrist members of the opposition with support from the Church, and contained some of the most stringent rules in Europe on assisted fertility at the time.
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