Thursday, May 04, 2006

BBC NEWS | Health | Woman to be oldest mother at 63

BBC NEWS | Health | Woman to be oldest mother at 63

There was some discussiuon of this at work this lunchtime. One colleague decided that women in their 60s should be banned from having IVF. Then he decided in fact it should be women in their 50s.

It's not difficult to imagine the problems of being the parent to a teenager when you are pushing 80, but people can be very quick to judge in situations like this. The woman in this case is said to have given much thought to the long-term well being of the child. If only the same could be said of many teenage parents and even some parents in their 20s and 30s for that matter. And yet we place no restrictions on their right to have children. Nor is there a huge moral outcry to prevent them. That's always struck me as something rather patronising and hypocritical in our society.