Chinese woman loses appeal for right to freeze her eggs

BEIJING: An unmarried Chinese woman said on Wednesday she had lost a final court appeal for the right to freeze her eggs, a procedure only available in China to married women.

The legal action taken by Xu Zaozao, 36, was closely watched in the country where women´s rights have become an increasingly prominent issue and the falling birthrate is of growing concern.

Xu has said she wanted to freeze her eggs to give herself the option of having a child alone if she could not find a partner.

“The appeal is rejected and the original judgment is confirmed,” she said on Wednesday evening in a live video broadcast on Chinese platform WeChat. “This result was expected.

“The most important thing is that, after so many years, we´ve finally reached an end, a result of sorts, an answer,” she added, while pledging “not to give up” on the cause.

In 2018, Xu, then 30, had wanted to have her eggs frozen but a Beijing hospital refused, telling her that the procedure was only available to women who could not become pregnant naturally, and not to healthy patients.

She filed a lawsuit in response, but a Beijing court dismissed her case in 2022, ruling that the hospital´s refusal to freeze Xu´s eggs was not illegal and did “not constitute an infringement of (her) rights”. She lodged an appeal the following year.