The Ley 26.862 of medically assisted production also known as the ‘Assisted Human Production Law’ or ‘National Assisted Fertilization Law’, was sanctioned by the Argentine Senate and Chamber of Deputies meeting in Congress on June 5, 2013, and promulgated on June 25, same year. It is a rule of public order and application throughout the Republic, through which the most varied possibilities of fertilization and implantation are allowed and regulated, and cryopreservation of genetic material and embryos is enabled without further ado.
The rule is intended “Guarantee comprehensive access to medical care procedures and techniques for medically assisted reproduction” (art. 1), these being understood as “procedures and techniques carried out with medical assistance to achieve a pregnancy”, within which are understood “low and high complexity techniques, which include or not the donation of gametes and/or embryos”, and the procedures and techniques that are developed in the future authorized by the application authority (art. 2).
Likewise, it provides that medically assisted reproduction procedures and techniques covered by the law can only be carried out “in authorized health establishments that meet the requirements determined by the enforcement authority.”
Any person of legal age who has given their informed consent has the right to access medically assisted reproduction procedures and techniques,[1]which may be revoked until before the implantation of the embryo in the woman.
The law states the following (art. 32):
The taxpayers covered by this law must incorporate as mandatory benefits and provide their members or beneficiaries with comprehensive and interdisciplinary coverage of the approach, diagnosis, medications and support therapies and procedures and techniques that the World Health Organization Health defines as medically assisted reproduction.[3]These include: ovulation induction; controlled ovarian stimulation; the triggering of ovulation; assisted reproductive techniques (ART); and intrauterine, intracervical or intravaginal insemination, with gametes from the spouse, cohabiting partner or not, or from a donor, according to the criteria established by the application authority.
Also included in such coverage are the services for guarding gametes or reproductive tissues, for those people who, even if they do not want to carry out the immediate achievement of a pregnancy, due to health problems or due to medical treatments or surgical interventions, may see their ability compromised. to procreate in the future.
The regulations also provide for the incorporation into the Mandatory Medical Program (PMO) of these procedures, as well as diagnostic, medication and support therapies, with the criteria and coverage modalities established by the application authority.
In order to ensure compliance, the law establishes the Ministry of Health of the Nation as the enforcement authority.[4](art. 26), creating in its scope “a single registry in which all those health establishments authorized to perform medically assisted reproductive procedures and techniques must be registered”, including among them “medical establishments where recipient banks of gametes and/or embryos.
Among the functions of the enforcement authority, it establishes the following: arbitrate the necessary measures to ensure the right to equal access of all beneficiaries to the practices; publish the list of public and private reference centers authorized to facilitate the population’s access to them; carry out information campaigns in order to promote fertility care in women and men, and promote the formation and continuous training of specialized human resources in medically assisted reproduction procedures and techniques.
