SPAIN (
El País / E.B.-L.M) More than 25,000 European women travel abroad each year, with or without partners, for fertility treatments, according to Fertility Counts, a group formed by members of the European Fertility Society. Many of these women are forced to seek treatment outside their own countries due to restrictive regulations at home. Reproductive tourism, as it is now referred to, is a growing business. Spain, which boasts some of the most progressive fertility laws in the EU, in addition to high-quality clinics, receives a third of these women, who spend some 40 million euros on treatments here each year. Buenaventura Coroleu, medical director for Barcelona fertility clinic Dexeus, says there has been "a boom" in assisted reproduction, and that foreigners represent between 15 and 20 percent of the 40,000 in-vitro treatments performed in Spain each year. More than 40 percent of these foreigners are Italian.>>>
