I had two babies aborted, admits oldest mother

The 66-year-old woman who last week became the world's oldest mother today reveals that she had two abortions as a young woman and deeply regretted having to wait another 40 years to become a parent.

Adriana Iliescu, a professor of literature at Romania's largest private university, the Hyperion, in Bucharest, gave birth to her daughter, Eliza Maria, after undergoing fertility treatment. Speaking for the first time from her bed at the Panait Sarbu Hospital in Bucharest, she told The Telegraph that she had become pregnant twice in her early twenties during a failed four-year marriage.

Mrs Iliescu said that the pregnancies were aborted because that was a routine method of birth control in her country at the time. She added, however, that she had spent most of the rest of her life wishing that she had a child.

"I got married when I was only 20 and still a student. My husband was also still a student at the atomic physics university back then, and the marriage didn't last long. We divorced four years later.

"In that time I had two pregnancy terminations - it was the normal thing back then and the accepted form of contraception. If there is anything I regret then it is those terminations, not having a baby now. Religion was not a big part of many people's lives and I had never had any religious education, I believed the party line that a foetus is only considered life when it is older than three months. In those days I would never have thought of a termination as murder, as I do now."

Mrs Iliescu gave birth last Sunday, seven weeks early, after undergoing in vitro fertilisation (IVF), for which she paid about €3,000 (£2,180). She was originally carrying triplets, but one died at 10 weeks and another earlier this month. Her doctors then decided to induce the delivery of her remaining child.

Mrs Iliescu's daughter weighed 3lb at birth and was being fed with a glucose solution in an incubator. She will not be moved until she gains at least another two pounds.

As she rested in her bed, Ms Iliescu spoke about the extraordinary joy she had felt when she looked at her baby and touched her for the first time. "It was the happiest in my life. She grabbed my finger with her tiny hand and held it - it was a gift from God."

Once Eliza Maria has grown enough to leave the hospital, Mrs Iliescu will take her daughter home to her tiny 10th-floor flat in Bucharest. Both her parents died recently in their 90s and she lives alone. She intends to carry on working because her monthly income of €500 will fall to €50 if she retires and takes a pension.

Mrs Iliescu, who has continued marking exam papers while in hospital, has arranged for a nurse to become her nanny and help care for her daughter.

Disclosure of her personal circumstances has renewed debate over the lack of checks carried out by medical staff. In a prepared statement, Save the Children Romania said that doctors had "not given a single thought before the fertilisation procedure to the baby - about where she will live and grow up.

"Our vision, as well as the law, state clearly that the interests of the child take priority - and that the child should have a chance to grow up in a family that is able to take care of her and protect her until she reaches 18. This was not taken into account at all in this case."

Mrs Iliescu said, however, that she had "discovered religion" after her marriage – she is Romanian Orthodox – and believed that, after decades of hoping for a child, her daughter's arrival had divine sanction. "During this time I never gave up my faith in God and in the power of trying to realise one's dreams," she said.

Her attempts to have a baby began in earnest in 1995 when, aged 57, she heard about the first in vitro fertilisation in Romania and visited Ioan Munteanu, the doctor in charge of the procedure, in the western town of Timisoara.

Dr Munteanu said: "She came to me saying that what she had read of my work had given her hope again. She was more tenacious than any other person I've ever seen. She wanted more than anything to have a baby.

"The procedure was successful and her first IVF pregnancy went well until March 2000," said Dr Munteanu. "When she reached the fourth month, the embryo stopped its development and we had to terminate the pregnancy. I recommended that she make a new attempt in Bucharest and sent her back there."

Dr Bogdan Marinescu, the Bucharest doctor who supervised Mrs Iliescu's successful pregnancy, declined to comment on the ethical questions thrown up by the birth. "She was in the right condition to carry a pregnancy," he said. "From a biological point of view, Mrs Iliescu proved that she could carry a pregnancy to term."

He added that there was no evidence to suggest that the loss of the other foetuses was related to her age. "This happens even with younger mothers with multiple pregnancies."

Romanian fertility clinics are now bracing themselves for a wave of applications following Mrs Iliescu's case. A spokesman at one clinic, in the Giulesti Maternity Hospital in Bucharest, said that calls had already been received from people in Britain and Italy inquiring about possible treatment. "Under Romanian law a woman can continue to receive fertility treatment right up until she has the menopause. In many cases though we can help a woman to comply with this by putting the menopause on hold with a special treatment.

"We can offer this service to any woman who wants to pay the costs, which are usually around €2,000 but can be as much as €6,000. The basic question is that if a woman is able physically to have children, then she is eligible for fertility treatment. This means a woman of 60 who has not gone through the menopause can come here for treatment, wherever she is from."

The arrival of Mrs Iliescu's baby is perhaps the most striking illustration of the acceleration of IVF treatments since 1978, when Louise Brown became the world's first "test-tube baby" after a successful procedure was carried out at a clinic in Cambridgeshire. Since then 68,000 babies have been born in Britain through IVF and more than a million worldwide.

Today, one per cent of all UK births are the result of the treatment and each year 27,000 British couples have IVF, in which eggs are collected from the ovaries and combined with sperm in a laboratory. If the sperms fertilise an egg, the resulting embryo or embryos are placed into the womb. In Mrs Iliescu's case, both the sperm and eggs she used were anonymously donated. While the success rate for IVF patients of all ages is around 22 per cent, it is considered that fertility in women declines steeply from the age of 44. The oldest woman to conceive and give birth was in her mid-50s.

The previous record for the oldest mother was held by a woman in India who in 2003 had a child at the age of 65. The oldest woman in Britain to become a mother was Liz Buttle, a Welsh hill farmer who, at 60, gave birth in 1997 after giving a false age to receive fertility treatment. She and her son, Joe, now live in Ireland.

Pregnant women over 50 are considered to be at high risk of complications because they are less able to cope with the physical stress of carrying a child. Many British clinics set 50 as the upper age limit for IVF procedures.

... her first IVF pregnancy went well until March 2000," said Dr Munteanu. "When she reached the fourth month, the embryo stopped its development and we had to terminate the pregnancy. I recommended that she make a new attempt in Bucharest and sent her back there."

How completely incompetent. Why didn't he recommend psychological treatment? Maybe she could have volunteered in an orphanage, when she wasn't working.

This whole thing is so totally wrong. This woman now has, what is it, five dead babies? And one living who will be brought up by a nanny.

For Ch**st sakes! This woman is an immoral, selfish moron. I really wish she didn't have the ability to impact so many born and UNBORN lives - She is insignificant and D**N the doctors who assisted her in her latest dysfunctional endeavor!

On the one hand the woman is a murderer who butchered two innocent lives.

On the other hand, she has found religion and established a relationship with God. But the matter of forgiveness for her violation of one of the Great Commandments is a matter between her and God. She STILL is a murderer; whether God forgives her or not does not erase her crime.

There can be no doubt, however, that this person has made a colossal error in judgment in choosing to become a single parent at her age. She has committed a monstrous injustice to this child, insofar as the life expectancy tables clearly show a very high likelihood of that child losing that single parent before completing elementary school. This "parent" deserves a psychiatric evaluation [and treatment]. And so do the medical people who facilitated this atrocity.

Ellen Goodman saw fit to use this woman as an example in her latest column. Ellen basically says that women are put in the position of having to do what this woman did-- choose between motherhood and a career. Stupid Ellen doesn't see that having children is a career. It's the most important career a woman can have. Stupid Ellen doesn't understand that when one tries to have two careers, one career suffers. Furthermore, stupid Ellen and this stupid woman don't see that this woman made her choice years ago-- now her baby will pay for it.

I'm amazed at the number of naysayers here! While I couldn't agree more that adoption should be the first choice when conceiving is impossible (or, in this case, improbable without treatment), her first two "murders" were, in a sense, manslaughter--she had, so she says, no formed conscience. But even if she had, she managed to reform later and perhaps correct her previous error (as if one life could substitute for another).

I'm less amazed at those who believe it's irresponsible to have a child at a late age. Little faith. What, really, does age have to do with the issue? Grandmothers and even great grandmothers are left with infants and toddlers all the time in this age of feminism; no one complains about that! Not to mention that life-expectancy and -quality have improved greatly since the "norms" for parenthood were arbitrarily set.

No matter which side of the abortion issue you are on, this
situation is a stunning example of why if there must be
abortions then the removal of reproductive organs should be
part of the operation.

I know, I know ...but at least it would cut down abortions
quite a bit.

I agree. There are also too many chances for this little one to grow up an orphan for this woman's vanity project to have my blessing. It's all about her.

Even at 40 I'm not as full of the energy needed to raise a child. Our bodies start wearing out and at 60+ there ain't a whole lot left to give.

This poor child will end up taking care of this woman. This was a very selfish, self centered thing to do.

Ellen Goodman is on Planet Zongo (as Mark Steyn likes to say). I have some sympathy for the woman's having had abortions many years ago. Communist Romania was a horrible place, and most people simply didn't have children at all.

However, to pretend there's some parallel between this woman's unfortunate decisions, and the "choices" of overindulged American women, is simply an ideological smokescreen. A more rational reading would be that the poor lady was driven around the bend by post-abortion guilt.

I'm less amazed at those who believe it's irresponsible to have a child at a late age.

There's a difference between becoming pregnant naturally in one's later years, and manufacturing a child when one is physically too old to conceive.

And I don't think a single woman (of any age) who intends to hire a nanny and go on with her childless lifestyle should adopt a child, either. It's not fair to the child.

So the logic here is that if one is too tired, one should refuse to accept a pregnancy and that it should never be necessary for children to take care of their parents?

No, our bodies naturally stop having babies at a reasonable age. 66 yr old women are in no way, shape of form capable of raising a baby for the next 18 years.

I agree with the poster who said this was an immoral thing to do.

There's a difference between becoming pregnant naturally in one's later years, and manufacturing a child when one is physically too old to conceive.

Agreed--all but the last phrase. Again--what in the world does age have to do with it? If 60's the new 30, isn't age a bit too relative to use as determinant? 66 isn't even too old to ride a motor-cycle, ski, mountain-climb, marathon (not to mention shovel snow, take the garbage out, mow the lawn, SHOP!). She may have a rough time demonstrating tumbling moves or jump-shots; but I know a bunch of women who couldn't do that at ANY age.

This is a very selfish woman who is trying to make excuses for murdering her first two babies. She tries to blame it on the government or culture at that time. The truth is no one forced her to have an abortion. She chose to do so. Long after she was of normal childbearing age, she started the fertility treatments that caused more of her babies to die. Sadly the child that was born to her will probably end up having to take care of a sick, selfish old lady when she is still a very young person. Somehow I think that may be exactly why this OLD woman had this child. She was afraid of growing old with no one to take care of her. What a sick, selfish, poor excuse for a human.

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