Brazil has guaranteed that gay couples across the country have access to assisted fertilization.

According to Brazilian news website Globo.com, the Federal Council of Medicine (CFM) has adjusted the vague wording in an existing law that some courts used to block same-sex couples from using in-vitro fertilization and other assisted fertilization methods.

‘Now it is the clear right of homosexual couples’ to use assisted fertilization said Hiran Joseph Gallo, coordinator of CFM Technical Chamber of Assisted Reproduction.

Updates to this law, published in the government’s official gazette this week, explicitly state that same-sex couples have the right to assisted reproduction but must also ‘respect the doctor’s right to conscientious objection.’

With lesbian couples, one partner may be inseminated and that egg can then be transplanted to the other partner. In the case of gay couples, the male partners are encouraged to find a family member separated up to four degrees of kinship to carry the baby.

This latest update, the third version of this resolution, also lists a framework for the disposal of frozen embryos after five years, and sets an age limit of 50 years for women seeking assisted fertilization.

According to Spanish-language news website Terra.com, surveys conducted by the National Agency for Sanitary Surveillance (ANVISA) show that in Brazil more than 26,000 embryos were frozen in 2011.

The cost of freezing the reproductive material can vary between £600 and £1200 (â‚¬710-â‚¬1420), and according to the CFM, almost 80% of this material is eventually abandoned by patients.