Alarm at egg-freezing offer

Offers by corporate giants Apple and Facebook to pay for female employees to have their eggs frozen so that they focus on their careers have been criticised by the German Church. Bishop Heiner Koch, who is responsible for family affairs in the German bishops’ conference, said that such an offer signalled that children were of secondary importance to professional requirements, and that career and family were incompatible – a signal that was “totally wrong”.

Bishop Anton Losinger, auxiliary in Augsburg and a member of the German Ethics Council, said that such offers only served the aim of “maximising labour market and economic profits”. It would be the women who later bore the risks and the burden of the medical procedure, he warned.

Fr Karl Jüsten, the head of the bishops’ office for relations with the German Government, said that giving women the option of egg-freezing would lead to in-vitro fertilisation, which was forbidden by the Church.

The president of the German Catholic Family Association, Stefan Becker, said:?“Instead of encouraging employees to postpone childbearing, employers should welcome children.” Since the beginning of this year, Facebook has been paying female employees in the United States up to $20,000 (£12,570) to have their eggs frozen and Apple wants to follow suit from January 2015.