Move over Octo-Mom, make way for sexagenarian mom!
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Just when you thought it was safe to go into labor, here comes the next ethical furor over motherhood: How old is too old to become a first-time mom?
Enter Elizabeth Adeney, a 66-year-old British woman who is reported to have traveled to Ukraine to seek fertility treatment that has resulted in a pregnancy. Adeney’s first child is due to be born, by elective Caesarean section, in the coming week or two. If all goes as planned, that will make her Britain’s oldest first-time mother.
Adeney may be the latest older woman to give birth, but she is not alone and hardly the oldest. Last year, an Indian woman gave birth at 70 to a daughter conceived with the egg and sperm of her niece and the niece’s husband. In 2006, a 66-year-old woman in Barcelona gave birth to twin sons after she lied about her age to fertility doctors and was implanted with embryos. In 2005, a 66-year-old Romanian woman gave birth to a daughter. Janise Wulf, a 62-year-old great-grandmother from Redding, Calif., gave birth in 2006 to her 12th child.
In Britain, Adeney’s pregnancy has reignited a debate over the age at which fertility clinics should say no to a woman intent on becoming pregnant, and on what grounds. Fertility clinics in Russia and other former Soviet states are enjoying a booming business in ‘fertility tourism’ from women who in their own country face stricter legal or cultural rules on the transfer of embryos to older women. In the process, 66 seems to be becoming the new 44.
At issue in the debate sparked by Adeney’s pregnancy is, once again, the likelihood that a child born to an older mother may become motherless before emerging from her teens. Adeney is divorced and a wealthy businesswoman who is apparently fit and healthy. But ethicists, government officials and fertility physicians have been trading jabs about how long she will be alive to parent her progeny, and whether a woman of her age can withstand the rigors of parenthood. ‘Women do not have a right to have a child; the child has a right to a suitable home,’ said former Secretary of State for Health Virginia Bottomley.
Today, 1 in 5 American women has her first child after age 35, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Older mothers do run a higher risk of suffering gestational diabetes, placental problems that can cause severe bleeding, premature delivery and stillbirth, according to the March of Dimes.
All of those risks clearly affect the health of the baby born of an older mother, as well as the mom herself. And the risk of becoming a motherless child is no day at the beach either.
This is not something any sexagenarian can do on her own -- she needs not only a sperm donor but an egg donor, an assisted reproductive technology team and an obstetrician to see her safely through pregnancy. So it’s a legitimate subject for public debate, isn’t it? Just how old IS too old to give birth to a baby?
-- Melissa Healy
