Is 60 too old to have a baby?

In May, 66-year-old Elizabeth Adeney gave birth to a son, making her the UK’s oldest mother. Two months later, 69-year-old Maria del Carmen Bousada de Lara died in Spain, leaving her two-year-old twin boys motherless. Jean Elgie asks, is 60 too old for fertility treatment?

Yes
Though puberty has got younger and life expectancy has increased (to 83 for women), the menopause still takes place around 51. And for those women who have missed the baby boat, they have no alternative but to turn to IVF.
There is no age limit in the UK set by the fertility watchdog the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) but the NHS will only fund treatment up to the age of 40, and in practice most private clinics have a cut-off of 45.
As Peter Bowen-Simpkins of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) says, ‘Women over 50 should not be offered IVF. There are considerable risks, among them high blood pressure, pre-eclampsia, diabetes, poor placental function and possible neurological problems in the baby. But there are exceptions. Say a woman with cancer at age 48-49 had stored embryos prior to treatment and been given the all clear at 53, we would support her in having a baby.’
A cornerstone of UK law is the welfare of the child, considering factors likely to cause serious physical, psychological or medical harm. This is something that Bill Ledger, professor of reproductive and developmental medicine at Sheffield University, believes is crucial. ‘This supports helping women to conceive with donor eggs up to their early 50s, with a reasonable likelihood of the child growing up with its mother.’
So is it selfish to have a child at 60? ‘Yes,’ says Bowen-Simpkins. ‘Women forget that the child has got to be parented and, if the mother dies, that responsibility passes to other family members.’ As Professor Ledger says, ‘Just because we can do something doesn’t make it wise.’

No
When Elizabeth Adeney, the UK’s oldest mother at 66, gave birth to son Jolyon this year, she said, ‘It’s not my physical age that’s important, it’s how I feel inside.’
But Italian fertility specialist Professor Severino Antinori says, ‘The maximum age for a woman to have a child should be 63 – the child needs a mother for the first 18-20 years.’ By the time Jolyon is 18, Adeney, now 67, will be 85.
One of Professor Antinori’s success stories is child psychiatrist Dr Patricia Rashbrook, who gave birth to Jude three years ago at the age of 62. Dr Rashbrook, a mother of grown-up children, chose to have another child to fulfil her 60-year-old second husband’s dream of becoming a father. Accused of selfishness, Dr Rashbrook responded that they wouldn’t have gone ahead if they’d felt they wouldn’t be good parents.
As 60-plus mothers are a new phenomenon, there hasn’t been enough research to back up claims that age shouldn’t be a bar to IVF. However, a 2006 study from the University of Southern California investigated 49 women who had given birth at 50 or over after treatment with donated eggs. The research concluded that, both physically and psychologically, mothers in their 50s are just as healthy as those who start families earlier.
As Sarah Vine commented in The Times after the death of Maria del Carmen Bousada de Lara, ‘Every day thousands of people give birth for all kinds of selfish reasons. Deciding who should be able to have children is a dangerous activity. It is a terrible shame that two children have lost their mother, but that doesn’t mean they should never have been born.’

Healthy Verdict
Ten years ago, this debate wouldn’t have taken place, but given the advances in IVF and the rising trend for older mothers, perhaps we need to look at our attitude to older women in general. Providing she is in good health, financially secure and has a strong family support system, should a woman have the right to choose when she has a child?