NHS saves sperm of transgender teenagers aged 12 so they can be fathers after changing sex
by Sanchez Manning, Mailonline:
Dozens of transgender teenagers are freezing their sperm or preserving their eggs on the NHS so that they can have babies after changing sex, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Adolescent boys – some as young as 12 – who believe they are female are having their sperm frozen before receiving powerful hormone treatment that halts the onset of puberty and shuts down their reproductive system.
They then have the option to use the frozen sperm so that they can father their own biological children after having sex-change surgery.
NHS clinics are also freezing the eggs of girls from the age of 16 before they begin taking male hormones that will reduce fertility. These eggs can then be used at a later date so they too can have their own babies.
Egg-freezing costs £4,000 for one cycle and around £300 for storage a year, while the price of preserving sperm is around £400, plus £300 a year to keep it frozen.
The current cost of providing fertility treatment to transgender teenagers on the NHS is believed to run into hundreds of thousands of pounds. But this bill is expected to rise as more young people say they have been born the wrong sex.
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