Gender Discrimination in Medically Assisted Procreation

In this chapter, we seek to analyze the current legislation on Medically Assisted Procreation (MAP) in the light of non-discrimination on the grounds of gender. Within the framework of the Council of Europe, the Istanbul Convention, established in 2011, contains a definition of gender, for the purposes of its application, that focuses less on the individual and subjective experience of what it means for each person to belong to a particular “gender” and more on the social construction of gender in each concrete society (Council of Europe 2011a; Council of Europe 2011b). The proposal to apply the principle of gender mainstreaming, i.e., to consider the “gender” dimension transversally in all dimensions of legal, political, and administrative activity, was made in September 1995 in the Beijing Platform for Action (United Nations 1995). Examples of the application of this principle are laws in the areas of contraception, abortion, Medically Assisted Procreation, rights associated with heterosexual and homosexual unions, parental responsibilities, the recognition of gender identity and the prohibition of unfair discrimination on the basis of this new factor of non-discrimination. The typification of hate crimes in the Criminal Codes of the different countries is, perhaps, one of the most important expressions of the current national Antidiscrimination Law on gender.