Sixty-year-old woman gives birth to twins in Calgary hospital: CBC
February 5, 2009
THE CANADIAN PRESS
CALGARY – A medical ethicist says a child's best interests are the most important consideration when women use fertility treatments to become mothers long past natural child-bearing years.
Margaret Somerville of McGill University in Montreal says no one has the right to interfere in natural conception, but ethics are different when medical advances are involved.
Her comments came Thursday after a spokesperson for the Calgary Health Region confirmed a 60-year-old woman gave birth at a city hospital.
The health region wouldn't give details, but CBC Newsworld was reporting that the woman had twins after fertility treatments in India.
Somerville said a woman who is 60 probably wouldn't be allowed to adopt a child, and the considerations used to make that decision should also apply when an older mother wants to use special treatments to get pregnant.
She said the ethics are further complicated by the fact many older women are no longer producing eggs and so aren't even genetically related to the children they deliver.
The CBC said Ranjit Hayer's two boys were delivered seven weeks prematurely by caesarean section at Calgary's Foothills Hospital on Tuesday.
The mother was recovering in intensive care, while the twins were in neo-natal intensive care.
The CBC said one of the babies was breathing with the help of special equipment, but doctors said both boys were doing well.
The network quoted the woman's obstetrician, Colin Birch, as saying there are social and ethical considerations beyond the medical ones.
He said he can't imagine being 65 and having two five-year-olds running around.
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Read more about the octuplets on the parentcentral.ca editor's blog.
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