Michaela Onyenwere on fertility planning; All-Star Game starter rankings

The New York Liberty selected the former UCLA forward sixth overall in the 2021 WNBA draft, and within weeks she was in sea foam at Barclays Center, playing her way to the rookie of the year honors. She earned her degree at UCLA, played overseas in Spain and now in year two of her professional career she begins planning a family.

No, no, not like that. Onyenwere, who turns 23 on August, learns about her reproductive health and fertility as part of a campaign with Modern Fertility so that she is prepared for that part of her life beyond.

“We’re going overseas, so it’s like, OK, if I’m going to have a child at some point in my life, I know I might have to miss basketball. I know I might have a should miss part of my career, “Onyenwere told Yahoo. Sport. “I think it’s so important to me to – not that I want children soon – it’s very important to me to have that resource and option to do that.”

Onyenwere is joined on the campaign by Liberty teammate Betnijah Laney and WNBA counterparts Candace Parker, Nneka Ogwumike and Chiney Ogwumike. The campaign highlights the difficulty for female athletes to have a family when their bodies are literally their careers and support is largely lacking.

That second issue is starting to change for the better. When Title IX turned 50 this week, the sports world celebrated progress while also focusing on the next 50 years of growth in equality. This includes maternity protection and access to family planning so that athletes are not restricted in their careers.

The WNBA included it in its groundbreaking 2020 collective bargaining agreement, a big leap from when Sheryl Swoopes gave birth to her son shortly before the first WNBA season kicked off in 1997. The CBA includes fully paid maternity leave, compensation for fertility support and adoption fees, childcare allowance and the end of the stigmatizing use of “suspended” when a player is out due to pregnancy.

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Players have already benefited from the changes. Cheyenne Parker and Napheesa Collier each gave birth to daughters while Breanna Stewart, who used a surrogate, and Parker, whose wife carried their son, welcomed children.

But talking about it in a campaign is very different from silently using a job advantage. Onyenwere, who is the youngest W star in the campaign at six years old, said she was a little nervous when she first heard the pitch, because reproductive health is still such a taboo subject. Her first thought was, “OK, we’ll deal with it later,” and she thought back to a six-week college class on Black motherhood that piqued her interest.

“It made me more interested in gaining knowledge about my body,” Onyenwere said. “I know about my body on the athletic side. I could push my body on the athletic side. But I’m not so familiar with the reproductive side, the hormones and my eggs and things like that. I think it’s a no- brainer kind of collaboration that I’m very excited to keep learning about. “

The progress made in the WNBA, other sports leagues and society in general when it comes to family planning also comes at a time when the Supreme Court appears to be ready to Roe v. Wade, a 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide, to reverse. (After this piece was published Friday morning, the court announced its formal vote, 6-3, to overturn the law.)

“I was very angry about just because it’s like there are men who are men who will never go through things that women go through on any level in any landscape that makes decisions for women,” Onyenwere, whose degree is in sociology, told Yahoo Sports said. “No matter how much I read about it, no matter how much I process it, I just get it. And unfortunately that’s just how it was for a long time.

“But it’s just as disappointing to see such things. See the world like that. Look at how women’s bodies are regulated, even from years and years and years and years ago. Decades ago. So it’s really, really sorry to see it I pray that we will be able to get to a space where it does not happen, where we can have the choice to have children, not to have children, to make those decisions for yourself that is best for yourself. “

WNBA All-Star Rankings

A’ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart, Sylvia Fowles and Sue Bird shares captaincy duties as four of the 10 All-Star starters announced by the league on Wednesday. All-Star picks are always interesting because they are a weighted voice between fans, media and players, so it gives insight into where each sector stands. And there were some big differences between those parties.

At the waiting position, the numbers 5-7 finishers each had margins of at least seven between the highest position and the lowest. Seattle Stormwag Jewell Loyd was third by players, fifth by fans and 10th by the media (East Coast bias proven?).