The National Assembly’s passage of the Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Bill, 2022, marks a defining moment for reproductive health policy in Kenya. The legislation, completed in the House, sets out a comprehensive regulatory architecture for in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), intrauterine insemination, gamete and embryo donation, and surrogacy. It creates a licensing and oversight regime intended to protect patients, donors, surrogate mothers and children, while expressly outlawing exploitative commercial surrogacy and other unethical practices. The Bill will go to the Senate for concurrence and, if returned, to the President for assent.
The statute establishes an Assisted Reproductive Technology Directorate charged with standard setting, licensing, inspection and the maintenance of confidential national registers for clinics, donors, embryos and children conceived through assisted reproduction. The Directorate is empowered to issue, vary, suspend and revoke licences and to prescribe technical and professional standards for centres and practitioners. The Bill also obliges the national and county governments to make resources available, expand access and integrate ART services into health financing frameworks. These institutional arrangements are set out in the Bill’s core provisions and reflect a deliberate move from an unregulated market to a state-supervised system.
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The Act frames access as a right, affirming that all Kenyans should be able to access quality, cost-effective assisted reproductive services, and it instructs that such care be provided by licensed specialists. It extends provisions designed to be inclusive, for example, the Bill expressly allows access irrespective of gender or marital status, while also setting specific eligibility and protective conditions for surrogacy.
Under the new law, surrogacy is permitted only on an altruistic basis and is strictly regulated: surrogate mothers must meet minimum age and parity requirements, undergo medical and psychological screening, and may receive compensation only for expenses and loss of earnings, not payment for the service itself. The aim is to expand access without opening the door to commodification or cross-border exploitation.
The legislation is explicit and punitive in prohibiting commercial surrogacy, the sale of gametes or embryos, sex selection except for medically justifiable reasons, human cloning and any use of reproductive material without proper consent. The Bill caps the number of donations from a single donor and imposes criminal sanctions and significant fines for breaches. These measures both signal Kenya’s intent to align ART practice with human rights standards and respond to public anxieties about exploitation in a sector that can attract transnational demand. The penal framework therefore serves a dual function: deterrence and the protection of vulnerable parties.
Rights and Records: Parentage, The Child And Data Stewardship
A central legal concern the Bill addresses is the status and protection of children born of ART. The law provides that such children enjoy the same legal rights as those born through natural conception and confirms that commissioning parents are to be recognised as the legal parents on birth records. The Bill also creates a confidential registry to track procedures, donors, embryos and outcomes. The statute restricts disclosure, permits persons conceived via ART to request certain information once they attain majority, and sets rules on what data may be released and to whom. Taken together, these provisions reflect an attempt to balance the child’s right to identity with donor anonymity and the imperative of privacy in sensitive medical contexts.
What This Means for Families In Kenya
Infertility is a public health and social issue that frequently carries stigma; the Bill’s framers repeatedly emphasised dignity, cultural sensitivity and ethical boundaries during parliamentary debates. By explicitly allowing access regardless of marital status and by including provisions for intersex persons, the law broadens the universe of who can legitimately seek these services. At the same time, the tight regulation of surrogacy and the ban on commercial transactions aim to protect women from exploitation while safeguarding children’s best interests. For many couples and individuals currently priced out of or pushed into informal channels for fertility care, a regulated system promises safer, standardised pathways to treatment. Parliamentary reporting also emphasised the law’s aim to reduce harmful transnational practices and shield vulnerable Kenyans from foreign actors seeking to purchase reproductive services.
The Bill is granular in its technical prescriptions. Clinics will have to meet minimum infrastructural requirements and gain licences; professionals will need specific qualifications; gamete and embryo storage will be limited by statutory periods; informed written consent will be mandatory for any use of reproductive material; posthumous use is tightly controlled and permitted only with prior authorisation; and record-keeping and inspection regimes are rigorous. The legislation also mandates counselling for donors, commissioning parents and surrogates, pre-implantation genetic testing procedures are regulated, and there are limits on how many children may be conceived from a single donor. For clinicians, the law creates clear procedural obligations; for patients, it clarifies rights, consent and recourse mechanisms. These technical details are drawn from the Bill’s clauses and accompanying explanatory memorandum.
Where Kenya Stands Regionally and Globally
Kenya’s step into comprehensive ART regulation places it among a small but growing number of African states that have sought to legislate assisted reproduction. The parliamentary debate emphasised the global scale of infertility, commonly estimated at around one in six couples, and the need for domestic frameworks to ensure safe, equitable services. By aligning legal standards with ethical and medical supervision, Kenya hopes both to improve outcomes for infertile couples and to prevent unregulated, transnational reproductive markets that can emerge where domestic law is silent. The Bill’s promoters argued that the framework will support responsible clinical expansion and research while preserving cultural values and human rights protections.
Despite broad support for regulation, the Bill contains areas likely to provoke continuing debate and operational complexity. The prohibition of commercial surrogacy will be welcomed by some rights advocates but may push prospective commissioning parents toward cross-border arrangements where rules differ. Questions remain about practical access and affordability: the law tasks national and county governments with resourcing services and asks insurers to include ART in coverage, but actual budgetary allocations and insurance uptake will determine whether the promise of access is realised.
The creation of the Directorate and the maintenance of a national register also raise implementation questions about data security, the capacity of inspection regimes, and the training pipeline for embryologists and ART specialists. Civil society, professional bodies and patient groups are likely to monitor these aspects closely as the law moves to the Senate and into implementation.
Legislative reporting indicates the Bill will be transmitted to the Senate for concurrence and, if the Senate agrees, to the President for assent. The secondary regulatory architecture, cabinet regulations, licensing rules, and professional guidelines yet to be drafted, will determine the pace and character of implementation. Key dates to monitor will be the Senate consideration and any presidential decision, followed by the Cabinet Secretary’s regulations, which will populate the statutory framework with operational detail. Until those regulations are published, clinics and practitioners must plan cautiously, and regulators must begin capacity building.
Metrics That Will Tell the Story Going Forward
The law’s real effect will be measurable against several empirical indicators: compliance and licensing rates for clinics; the number and geographic distribution of licensed ART facilities; trends in clinic outcomes and patient safety metrics; the volume and origin of gamete donations and the registry data on donor limits; insurance uptake and public funding allocations for ART; and, importantly, whether enforcement actions are taken against illicit commercial surrogacy or trafficking. Close scrutiny of these metrics will show whether the law achieves safe expansion of services, equitable access and protection for vulnerable parties, or whether implementation gaps open space for illicit practice. Early regulatory decisions, on storage limits, counselling requirements, and cross-border arrangements, will be especially revealing.
Cautious Welcome with A Watchful Eye
Kenya’s Assisted Reproductive Technology Act, 2022, is a major milestone in the governance of reproductive health. It establishes a legal architecture built around rights, professional oversight and explicit prohibitions against commercialisation and abuse. For infertile couples and marginalised persons seeking reproductive services, the law promises greater clarity, legality and protection. At the same time, the law’s effectiveness will depend on resources, regulatory detail and enforcement capacity. The next stages, the Senate’s concurrence, presidential assent, and the Cabinet Secretary’s regulations, will determine whether Kenya’s ambitions translate into safe, accessible and ethically grounded services for the many families who now look to assisted reproduction for hope.
