Whether there should be restrictions for access to Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) is a matter of continuous medical, societal, and ethico-legal debate. One of the most controversial topics in this context is the use of parental age as a criterion to limit access to ART. Views are divided on whether there should be an upper age limit for one or both parents and on where such limits should be. Although this debate is centered around the issue of 'age' and although age-related limits are present in many legislations, the intrinsic ambiguity of the term `age' is largely overlooked. In this article, we build on gerontological, medical, and sociological literature on the concepts of 'age' and 'aging' to distinguish three conceptions of age that are relevant for ART regulation: the chronological, the biological, and the social-cultural one. Beyond mapping out these conceptions of age, we describe how they relate to ART and reproduction, and illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of relying on each of them as a basis for limiting ART access. Finally, we propose a template for defining legal age limits for ART access in the law, based on the refined understanding of the different conceptions of age that we outline and we discuss two potential objections to our proposal.

中文翻译：

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解构年龄：分析不同的年龄概念作为获得辅助生殖技术的法律标准。

是否应该限制辅助生殖技术 (ART) 的使用，这是一个持续不断的医学、社会和伦理法律争论的问题。在这方面最具争议的话题之一是使用父母年龄作为限制获得 ART 的标准。对于父母一方或双方是否应该有年龄上限，以及这种限制应该设在哪里，意见不一。尽管这场辩论围绕“年龄”问题展开，而且尽管许多立法中都存在与年龄相关的限制，但“年龄”一词内在的模糊性在很大程度上被忽视了。在这篇文章中，我们以关于“年龄”和“老化”概念的老年学、医学和社会学文献为基础，区分与 ART 监管相关的三种年龄概念：时间顺序的、生物学的、和社会文化的。除了绘制出这些年龄概念之外，我们还描述了它们与 ART 和生殖的关系，并说明了依赖它们中的每一个作为限制 ART 访问的基础的优点和缺点。最后，我们提出了一个模板，用于在法律中定义 ART 访问的法定年龄限制，该模板基于对我们概述的不同年龄概念的深入理解，并讨论了对我们提案的两个潜在反对意见。