西班牙足协将为女足国家队球员资助冷冻卵子服务

Spain’s football federation has reached an agreement with a local fertility clinic to fund egg freezing for members of the national women’s team, in one of the highest-profile examples of a fertility program for European athletes.

The agreement was revealed by Spanish player Alexia Putellas earlier this week. “You’re representing your country at the expense of your biological clock,” Putellas said in an interview with Spanish outlet El País. “You can’t just stop and become a mother, because you need your body to do your job.”

The details of the agreement will be outlined in the coming weeks, according to a spokesperson for the Royal Spanish Football Federation. Spain’s women’s team is ranked number one in the world, while Putellas — who joined the London City Lionesses this summer — is considered one of the best players of her generation.

The move is part of a growing effort to address the clash between athletes’ careers and their reproductive choices. In the US, players in the Women’s National Basketball Association and National Women’s Soccer League are already able to access fertility-treatment support. The Women’s Tennis Association, the sport’s global governing body, launched a program last year providing paid maternity leave as well as grants for fertility treatments.

In the UK, London-based football club Chelsea FC recently announced that “bespoke fertility support” would be available to its women’s team players, according to its website, while its national professional football association has announced a partnership with a fertility provider, offering support to both male and female players.

“I’m very, very much in favor of this initiative,” said Rebeca Beguería, a gynecologist who has assisted football players with fertility treatments, of the Spanish federation’s plans. The agreement allows the athletes to take “preventive steps against potential reproductive health issues,” she said, adding: “It’s something very positive, for which people in women’s football have been fighting for a long time.”

Not all experts are quite as upbeat. “Freezing your eggs doesn’t mean you can just hit pause and then press play on having a baby whenever you want,” said Patricia Bartolomé, head of the master’s program in integrative fertility at Spain’s University of Vitoria-Gasteiz. “There’s a risk of passing on the wrong message: Egg freezing only opens a small chance.”

The agreement has also sparked a debate among some athletes. “What if a measure that’s being sold to us as feminist is actually deeply sexist?” asked triple jumper Ana Peleteiro in a video posted on social media. “Is this measure intended to make it easier for women to become mothers, or to make it easier for them not to become mothers while they’re still playing? Because those are two very different things,” she added.

Spain has become one of Europe’s leading markets for fertility treatments, propped up by legislation that guarantees broad access to private assisted reproduction. That popularity has attracted large international investors such as KKR & Co., which in 2022 acquired IVI RMA Global, one of the country’s leading fertility groups, for about €3 billion ($3.48 billion).