Posted on 07/16/2009 10:29:41 AM PDT by OrangeHoof
MADRID (AP) — A Spanish woman believed to have become the world's oldest new mother when she gave birth at 66 has died at 69, leaving behind twin toddlers, newspapers reported Wednesday.
Maria del Carmen Bousada, who reportedly died Saturday, gave birth in December 2006 as a single mother after getting in vitro fertilization treatment at a clinic in Los Angeles.
The births ignited a firestorm of debate over how old is too old for a new mother, and how much responsibility fertility clinics have over who gets treatments.
Bousada told an interviewer she lied to the fertility clinic about her age, and maintained that because her mother had lived to be 101, she had a good chance of living long enough to raise a child.
(Excerpt) Read more at legacy.com ...
A selfish exhausted woman!
I hope that there’s some loving relative who will take the girls. But, hey, what the heck? Maria died fulfilled, right?
I think the potential problems from a govt being able to decide who can or can’t have kids far out-strip the problems that rare cases like this might cause.
Do you take the same attitude towards a woman in her thirties, who already has children and goes ahead and gets pregnant again, despite already having had breast cancer? She’s got an even higher chance of leaving her children without a mother in a very few years, but most FReepers seem to regard that sort of thing as heroic.
This is not a government problem ... the various medical associations need to get together and decree that members shall not reverse menopause to produce pregnancy; violation to cause loss of license to practice medicine.
Exactly. There are never going to be very many women wanting to have babies at this age, and in most of those rare cases, there will be close relatives supporting the decision, involved in the babies’ lives from the start, and ready to step in as adoptive parents if the need arises. We should be more concerned about the never-ending stream of brain-damaged babies born to crackheads and methheads and alcoholics, whose mothers are second/third/fourth generation welfare dependents, and whose children are guaranteed to grow up at taxpayer expense and become welfare-dependent adults and/or prison inmates.
Your question is just peculiar. Why would it be "heroic" in such an instance? I do think it's heroic when a pregnant woman finds out she has cancer and puts off treatment until after the birth of the child.
I don’t know that anybody here’s said that an intentional pregnancy for a woman with cancer is “heroic”.
Nutjob lady went out of her way, including LYING to the fertility clinic about her age, to get pregnant.
Her risk of having disabled children was substantially higher at her age but, dammit, she wanted children.
I was talking about women who have already had cancer, and THEN proceed to get pregnant (often when they already have children), knowing it's more likely than not that they'll die before the child finishes elementary school. Most FReepers would think that was just fine, but then say it's obviously "selfish" when a very healthy 66 year old (who could pass for 55 to physicians), who actually has a longer life expectancy than the thirty-something woman with a history of breast cancer, decides to have a baby.
And if they don’t all agree to your proposed decree (which they don’t, and won’t)? And it’s the government that controls the issuance and revocation of medical licenses.
Yes, she is selfish. So are older men.
So now risk of having a disabled child is the criterion? She didn't have a disabled child -- she had a set of non-disabled twins. And since she was using donor eggs, she had a much lower risk of having a disabled child than a woman in her late 30s or early 40s (e.g. Sarah Palin). Should we also criticize women who allow themselves to get pregnant the natural way in their 40s, because "her risk of having disabled children is substantially higher"?
I'm just looking for some consistency here, and not finding any.
While family refused to release a cause a death (the exclusive “rights” to her story were sold to a publisher, the story said), it was reported that a tumor had been found on her soon after her delivery and the woman had been ill for some time, so she apparently wasn’t as healthy as she pretended to be.
I could live with a government law that would make illegal in vitro fertilization for women aged 50 or over. Natural fertilization is another story because then it’s not a doctor’s office making someone pregnant.
How does the use of donor eggs give her an advantage over a naturally-conceived mother 35-45?
She had to LIE to the doctors.
There’s your clue, right there.
If a woman in her 30s (hell, even her 20s) was told she had a significantly higher chance of a troubled pregnancy or disabled children, I’d say the same thing.
Was Sara Palin advised against pregnancy by her doctor?
Cuz, when you have to lie about your age to the doctor, you probably already know the answer.
If a healthy woman can naturally conceive, I think nature’s already given the go-ahead.
Just sayin’.
No argument from me. However, if the 58-year-old fathered a child with a woman in her 20s or 30s, the child would still have their mother if the man were to die.
I think most would claim that losing a mother is more devastating to toddlers than losing a father.
I don’t imagine that happens a lot. Most women who get breast cancer are older than their 30s when they get it. And what if a woman was in remission and had a good prognosis? You never know what will happen or who will get sick or when. A woman who’s been healthy her whole life might have a baby and then come down with an illness a year later, while the breast cancer survivor never has a recurrence.
Yeah, whatever makes you happy! Sad.
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