Posted by
Playful Walrus on Saturday, July 25, 2009 6:00:00 PM
Meghan Daum of the
Los Angeles Times has commentary on "older" people using "reproductive" technologies.
On July 11, Maria del Camen Bousada de Lara, a Spanish woman who 2 1/2 years ago briefly became the "world's oldest mom" when she gave birth to twin boys at age 67, died of cancer. A recipient of donor eggs and sperm at a Los Angeles fertility clinic, she had told doctors she was 55, the maximum age for partnerless in-vitro fertilization patients at that clinic.
This was a selfish move on her part. Neither men nor women should be making babies when they will likely be too old to raise them.
It is also immoral for reproductive specialists to aid anyone but a husband and wife in a healthy marriage who seem fit to be parents. Of course, these people are usually involved in creating "extra" human beings who are condemned to be killed. So morality isn't their specialty.
Since 1994, there have been 12 documented cases of women over 60 having babies (including a 62-year-old California woman who already had 11 other children). The reigning "world's oldest mom" is likely Omkari Panwar, an Indian woman who was believed to be 70 (her exact age was unknown) when she gave birth to boy-and-girl twins last summer. Never mind that she already had two grown daughters and five grandchildren. Her 77-year-old husband spent his life savings and sold his buffaloes to pay for in-vitro fertilization -- and donor eggs -- because they wanted a son.
A lot of people want a lot of things that they should learn to live without.
Dr. Laura had some good stuff to say about this subject
in her blog.