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" Last year, Facebook and Apple announced that they would pay for female employees to have their eggs frozen - a move that was widely-criticised for its suspected motives. Now, Facebook has defended the plan against those who believe it was put in place with the notion that building a career and becoming pregnant are incompatible. Many feared that the company was sending a message to its\u00A0female employees, telling them to delay motherhood until it&amp;#039;s convenient for the company. However, Facebook&amp;#039;s COO Sheryl Sandberg revealed that they created the policy because of a female employee who had cancer, and couldn&amp;#039;t afford to freeze her eggs.  Sandberg explained to Bloomberg: &amp;quot;There is a young woman working at Facebook who had got cancer. I knew her and she came to me and said I&amp;#039;m going to get treatment and that means I wont be able to have children unless I can freeze my eggs and I can&amp;#039;t afford it but our medical care doesn&amp;#039;t cover it.&amp;quot; It was this conversation that pushed Sandberg to speak to the head of human resources, and discuss the idea of paying for workers&amp;#039; eggs to be frozen.  &amp;quot;We stopped and looked at each other and said why would we only cover this for women with cancer why wouldn&amp;#039;t we cover this more broadly and that was where that benefit came from, and we think it&amp;#039;s great.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/reports/news/a35256/facebook-explains-egg-freezing-policy/>