Should 60-year-old Women Have Babies?

An article published by William Saletan of Slate.com explores the era of in vitro fertilization, harvesting and then freezing eggs, donor eggs, and womb-rejuvenating hormone therapy has opened the door for baby boom era women to want to be "mommies" again. And for some, for the first time. Which begs the questions, "should old women have babies" and "is middle-aged motherhood getting out of control"?

According to the Daily Mail's Allison Pearson middle-aged women should stop trying to defy biological laws and accept they are in their 60's and not 30's and 40's. About three years ago, Maria del Carmen Bousada, 66, pretended to be 55, in order to persuade a California fertility clinic to impregnate her with donated eggs and sperm. She gave birth to twins later that year and now, just two weeks ago, at the age of 69, Bousard dies of cancer leaving behind her two year-old twins.

In her column Pearson responded to the public outcry over the Bousada case. "There's a lesson for baby boomers in the story of Maria del Carmen Bousada," wrote columnist Allison Pearson in London's Daily Mail. "The lesson is that, contrary to the fond belief perpetrated by the most self-absorbed generation ever to grace the planet, 60 is not the new 40 and it never will be." Pearson called Bousada "part of an epidemic of older women who think they can get away with defying biological laws that have held good for thousands of years."

The article claims over the last three decades, the U.S. birth rate among women aged 35 or older has increased by 140 percent. These women now produce one of every seven American children. In Europe, women over 35 have increased their share of pregnancies from 5 percent to 20 percent. More than 100,000 American women aged 40 or older have babies each year. In the last 15 years, at least a dozen women aged 60 or older have done it. The oldest age at which a woman has given birth is now 70. As a result, the number of new pregnancies of women who are 55 and older are increasing at alarming rates.

Saletan also counters Pearson's response to "older women think they can get away with defying biological laws" by stating that the biological laws of maternity are shifting. Sixty may not be the new 40, but in some respects, 65 is the new 55. Maternal age is going up in part because, in terms of frailty and longevity, older women aren't as old as they used to be.


The clinic that impregnated Bousada ends eligibility for treatment at age 55. British and Spanish clinics have informal cutoffs at 50. Tony Rutherford, the head of the British Fertility Society, draws the line at 45 in his own practice. A bioethics institute is proposing to enforce the same limit in Spain. Britain's National Health Service cuts off in vitro fertilization at 40.

Why draw these lines? One rationale is nature. The British Fertility Society opposes fertility treatment after age 50 because "nature didn't design women to have assisted conception beyond the age of the natural menopause," says its secretary, Allan Pacey. "Once you get into the mid-50s, I think nature is trying to tell us something."

But what exactly is nature saying? Assisted conception is inherently unnatural. Strictly speaking, nature is telling us not to do it at all. Furthermore, in 1900, life expectancy for a girl born in the United States was 50.7 years. Was nature telling us that women shouldn't live, much less bear children, beyond that point? That didn't stop us from using science to extend women's lives. Why should it stop us from extending their fertility?

The medical community will say that women who wait until they're in their mid to late 40's and older to have children is not a wise thing to do. Factors include increased miscarriages, failing to get pregnant, or not living long enough to raise a child (Pearson argues that a woman should "survive until the kids reach 18." These are odds and with advances in medicine today women are successfully pregnant.