Reproductive tourism "booming" in Spain's quality fertility clinics

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.

In Spain, almost all forms of reproductive assistance have been approved, except choosing the child's sex and the use of surrogate mothers. Spain's national guidelines also allow treatment on women up to 50 years of age. Italy, however, is another story.

Law 40, passed by the Berlusconi government in 2004, prohibited the freezing of embryos and the use of third-party donors. Though the Constitutional Court overruled the former in 2009, the prohibition on third-party donors still stands, providing no option for infertile couples.