Federal Act
on Medically Assisted Reproduction
(Reproductive Medicine Act, RMA)

In this Act:

a.

tech­niques of med­ic­ally as­sisted re­pro­duc­tion (as­sisted re­pro­duct­ive tech­niques)means meth­ods of es­tab­lish­ing a preg­nancy without sexu­al in­ter­course – in par­tic­u­lar, in­sem­in­a­tion, in vitro fer­til­isa­tion with em­bryo trans­fer and gam­ete trans­fer;

b.

in­sem­in­a­tionmeans the in­tro­duc­tion, by means of in­stru­ments, of sperm cells in­to the fe­male re­pro­duct­ive or­gans;

c.

in vitro fer­til­isa­tionmeans the bring­ing to­geth­er of an ovum and sperm cells out­side the wo­man’s body;

d.

gam­ete trans­fer means the in­tro­duc­tion, by means of in­stru­ments, of sperm cells and ova in­to the uter­us or a Fal­lopi­an tube;

e.

re­pro­duct­ive cells (gam­etes)means sperm cells and ova;

f.

germline cellsmeans re­pro­duct­ive cells (in­clud­ing their pre­curs­or cells), im­preg­nated ova and em­bryon­ic cells whose ge­net­ic ma­ter­i­al can be passed on to off­spring;

g.

im­preg­na­tionmeans caus­ing a sperm cell to pen­et­rate in­to the cyto­plasm of an ovum, in par­tic­u­lar by in­sem­in­a­tion, gam­ete trans­fer or in vitro fer­til­isa­tion;

h.

im­preg­nated ovum means the fer­til­ised ovum be­fore pro­nuc­lear fu­sion;

i.

em­bryo means the de­vel­op­ing off­spring from the time of pro­nuc­lear fu­sion un­til the end of or­gano­gen­es­is;

j.

foetus means the de­vel­op­ing off­spring from the end of or­gano­gen­es­is un­til birth;

k.

sur­rog­ate moth­er means a wo­man who is pre­pared to be­come preg­nant by means of an as­sisted re­pro­duct­ive tech­nique, to carry the foetus to term and to sur­render the child per­man­ently to third parties after de­liv­ery;

l.

clon­ingmeans the ar­ti­fi­cial pro­duc­tion of ge­net­ic­ally identic­al or­gan­isms;

m.

chi­mera form­a­tion means the fu­sion of to­ti­po­tent cells from two or more ge­net­ic­ally dif­fer­ent em­bry­os. Em­bryon­ic cells are to­ti­po­tent if they are cap­able of de­vel­op­ing in­to any type of spe­cial­ised cell;

n.

hy­brid form­a­tion means caus­ing a non-hu­man sperm cell to pen­et­rate in­to a hu­man ovum, or a hu­man sperm cell in­to a non-hu­man ovum.