Facebook And Apple Are Paying To Freeze Women's Eggs: What Are The Consequences?

As young women wrestle with when to go full-throttle with their careers and when to start a family, Facebook and Apple have introduced a new employee perk that might make it all easier. The tech giants will now cover egg-freezing for non-medical reasons—the first two major companies to do so. The benefit could be worth as much as $12,000 and allow female employees to postpone parenting so they can focus on their work.

Facebook offered the new perk as of January this year, and Apple’s benefit will go into effect at the beginning of 2015. The procedure can cost anywhere between $5,000-$12,000 for just one cycle, and storage can cost $500-$800 per year.

Tech companies taking on extending female employees’ fertility has sparked some concern though: is this is really the best way for a workplace to help women balance their careers and motherhood? The debate centers around whether the companies are giving women options as far as deciding when to get pregnant or, on the flip side, taking away the idea that they can have both a family and a career at the same time.