The advent of human in vitro fertilization (IVF) at the end of the 1970s and the institutionalization of gamete donation, dating from the 19th century for sperm donation and the beginning of the 1980s for oocyte and embryo donation, has profoundly changed the management of infertility for heterosexual couples [1]. Assisted reproductive technology (ART) formerly dedicated to those couples, has been later developed in order to allow LGBT couples and single people to access parenthood, accompanying the global social change toward civil rights for LGBT people across the western world.

In France, the death penalty for sodomy has been abolished since the French Revolution in 1791 [2]. It took until 1982 for an end to the discrimination that gave sexual majority from the age of 15 for heterosexual vs. 21 for homosexual people, 1999 for same-sex civil unions, and 2013 for same-sex marriage and adoption [3].

In 2021, France authorized ART with sperm donor for female couples and single women, becoming the 11th country in the European Union to expand its access to ART [4]. In the previous laws relating to bioethics, in 1994, 2004, and 2011, ART was reserved for a heterosexual couple to remedy infertility whose pathological characteristics has been medically diagnosed [5,6]. The abandonment of the criterion of pathological reduced the distinction between indications historically qualified as "medical" and "social", making ART a medical support to respond to a parental project in line with the World Health Organization definition of health, access to parenthood being considered as a fundamental human right.

Despite the recent legislative amendment, many brakes and regulatory limitations are remaining and resulting in a system that excludes most of LGBT people from parenthood. We summarize here the possibilities of ART among LGBT people in France to date, pointing out the main restrictions for LGBT reproductive rights, requiring future legislative changes (Table 1).