Embryos
(asked on 30th January 2020) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Prior of Brampton on 22 November 2016 (HL3075), how many human embryos were deliberately destroyed in each of the last 12 months for which figures are available; how many human embryos were transferred to uteri in order to establish pregnancies; and what are the cumulative figures for both circumstances since such procedures were made legal.
The information requested is shown in the following tables. The following table provides the figures for each of the last 12 months, 1 January 2018 – 31 December 2018. The data is as shown on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority’s (HFEA) register database on 5 February 2020. This is a live database so these figures reflect the data on this day.
Year | Month | Total destroyed /discarded |
| Total embryos transferred |
2018 | January | 13,283 |
| 5,398 |
February | 15,193 |
| 7,352 | |
March | 16,257 |
| 7,360 | |
April | 15,150 |
| 6,728 | |
May | 15,300 |
| 6,735 | |
June | 15,520 |
| 6,263 | |
July | 15,236 |
| 6,598 | |
August | 15,057 |
| 6,779 | |
September | 13,485 |
| 6,187 | |
October | 16,087 |
| 7,002 | |
November | 16,029 |
| 7,637 | |
December | 10,597 |
| 4,734 | |
Total | 177,194 |
| 78,773 |
Source:
Source: HFEA
The following table provides the cumulative figures for both circumstances since 1 August 1991.
1 August 1991 – 31 December 2018 | |
Total number of embryos discarded/destroyed | 2,931,824 |
Total number of embryos transferred | 1,979,831 |
Source: HFEA