Spain's soccer federation will fund egg freezing. Is this a win for female athletes?

Should professional sporting bodies encourage female athletes to freeze their eggs?

That's part of the evolving conversation around athletes and motherhood as Spain's football federation becomes the latest organization to support fertility treatment for female players.

As part of its agreement, the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) said Tuesday that it will cover the full cost of egg-freezing treatment for all international players who have been called up at least twice.

"It's important that female athletes feel they don't have to choose between their professional and personal lives," Barcelona midfielder Patri Guijarro said at Tuesday's announcement.

For female athletes, the window of peak performance and the window for fertility overlap, which researchers have noted has often made athletes feel as though they have to choose one or the other.

The RFEF's move follows similar fertility provisions recently announced by several other soccer teams and federations — such as the National Women's Soccer League and the Chelsea FC women's team — and other leagues like the WNBA and Women's Tennis Association.

But while fertility preservation measures like egg freezing are typically presented as another way to give women in elite sport greater freedom to decide if and when to become mothers, some experts and advocates worry it could perpetuate the attitude that women should wait for retirement to do so.

In some ways, any time a sporting body or team announces fertility funding, it's an exciting step forward for women athletes, says two-time Olympic rower Jill Moffatt, the co-founder of the Canadian non-profit MOMentum, which supports athlete mothers.

At the same time, Moffatt says it's only a true feminist "win" if they