ELIZABETH ADENEY: 66-Year-Old Pregnant Woman To Become Britain's Oldest Mother

Elizabeth Adeney, a 66-year-old woman from Suffolk, England, is eight-months pregnant. When she delivers this summer she will be the oldest woman to ever give birth in Britain, and join the ranks of Adriana Iliescu and Omkari Panwar, both women who broke records by giving birth after the age of 65.

The "Daily Mail" reports that Adeney is believed to have undergone IVF treatments abroad because many British doctors refuse to give them to women over the age of 50.

Adeney, a divorcee, will raise the child alone and will be almost 80 years old when the child enters high school. She is a woman of means, who is in good health, but this is sure to reignite debate about parenting late in life.

The number of women who gave birth after 40 increased from 12,103 in 1996 to 23,706 in 2006, according to UK statistics. In 2004, Britain's Office for National Statistics released population data that found, "an ever-widening gap between fertility rates along social class lines, with wealthier women waiting until their 40s to have children while the birth rate among the youngest age groups is mainly among poorer mothers."

Despite the obvious increase in popularity, detractors say that just because a woman can give birth late in life, doesn't mean she should, "Women do not have the right to have a child; the child has a right to a suitable home," said former Secretary of State for Health in Britain, Virginia Bottomley, while addressing post-menopausal pregnancy.

Even the doctor who performed IVF treatments on Patricia Rashbrook, a woman who gave birth at the age of 62 in Britain, says this was a mistake. "The maximum age for a woman to have a child should be 63, because the average lifespan is 83 years of age and the child needs a mum for the first 18 to 20 years," said Professor Severino Antinori, an Italian embryologist who is also embroiled in the cloning debate. "The risks for a mum for giving birth at the age of 66 are very high. They include possible hypertension and even the risk of coma. Rashbrook was good medical science; we did 150 analyses in her case and we found she had a biological age of 45 even though her real age was, of course, much older."

Comments

[2opinion8td]

Natural resources? Oh good grief. Why buy into this global warming bull, "there are not enough resources left in the world..." OMGosh - young people, go look at national geographic photos of land a year after devastating fires or other natural disasters - you'll see photos that amaze scientists with the earths ability to RAPIDLY heal itself. Young people are being sold gloom and doom by people who simply mean to PROFIT from this C&@p about your sky falling. We should take care of the earth, but its ability to regenerate with care is unfathomable. Before you buy and parrot Al Gore TV without question, study up, my dear, you'll sleep better at night- and a quick question - will you hold to your own ethics? If it is WRONG will YOU refrain out of respect for dwindling resources? Course keep in mind - without electricity - and gasoline a highly developed society won't be possible and you will not have birth control readily available so that it is quite unlikely you'd be able to abide by this if you wanted too

What is utterly amazing is the need for people to insinuate themselves into territory that is not only highly personal - and absolutely NONE of your business. WHY and WHAT ideology has emerged that having children is SO bad in the eyes of western society? (think gross national product and if young women are working you make the rich richer-and really consider if THAT is what you were

[2opinion8td]

Oh, please YES! Let's sit in judgment over another WOMEN. There are few topics in the world that will generate such interest as when the "community" can pass judgment on a women. Get the rocks, ya'll.

Let's see - have a baby when you are young (and much easier biologically) and the world will call you stupid. Have one when you are old (the domain of men) and while it may be a fairly rare thing, it seems to bring no less an OVERWHELMING sense of the need to judge this person by others. Kill them with abortion and well, that one seems to be OK and certainly highly rated in the media.

I think its delightful to give women who have conquered some of the distressing issues of life - like making a living - and who now have time for children the opportunity. It has always been the domain of men to do this, maybe that is the cause of the broo-haha? GO SCIENCE GO!

[Kathleen Thornton]

It's not about whether she has a "right" to have a child. Clearly, we place such a high priority on individual rights -- much to the detriment to the environment, our resources, and our sense of community -- that she does have a "right." But is this sensible? On our horribly overcrowded planet, where people are living longer and using exponentially more resources over their lifetimes, for a 66 year-old woman to use even MORE resources to have yet ANOTHER baby?

I truly hope people are capable of making more sensible -- and less selfish -- decisions.

[Chaimirija]

A woman does not have a right to have a child? Now I have heard it all....

[entropyisfun]

This selfish and egotistical woman is putting that child at extreme risks due to her health status. She doesn't have that right - it's tantamount to child abuse.

[Hillary Fields]

I'm glad to see this story here and to see the debate go on. As one of Beliefnet's "Everyday Ethics" bloggers, we're also talking about this issue (see http://blog.beliefnet.com/everydayethics/2009/05/pregnant-at-66.html). Personally, while I feel post-menopausal pregnancy is ethically questionable and also very risky for both mother and child, it does not seem to have been a decision Ms. Adeney came to lightly. The bigger question is, how do we start deciding cut-off dates for women's fertility, and what criteria do we choose by? Are we to use actuarial tables? I mean, there are no guarantees in life, only statistical averages. Ms. Adeney is choosing to buck the odds and hope for the best. Since the decision is already made, I can only wish her and her baby the best.

[thepoliticalcat]

These selfish women. In a world running out of natural resources, where over 1 billion people have no access to clean drinking water, and millions of children die every day from perfectly preventable causes, they elect to bring children into the world. They really ought to be forced to talk to young people who lost their parents early, or kids who grew up in orphanages, or children of elderly parents. This woman won't be able to care for her child. There's nothing like having a mom who can't pick you up and carry you, or play catch with you. She'll need eldercare before the kid gets into high school. Pure selfishness.

[sandrascott98]

Do people really know what they want their unalienable rights to be. First I hear that it is a woman's right to choose to have a baby or not. No one ever specified an age. Then I hear that a woman doesn't have a right to have a child. First of all, when a woman decides to have a child and goes through fertility treatments, etc., she has already weighed all the risks and benefits to doing so. Second of all, I have met some 80+ year old women who have more energy, pep, and life than a 35 year old. When I met one in particular, I asked her to show me some i. d. because I did not believe she was 85. When she got finished telling me everything she had done that day (all the driving errands, shopping, visiting others, etc.), I became tired and felt ashamed for feeling a little tired when I had only managed to do half of what she had done that day at the age of 33. I also plan to be that way. As for society dictating who and who shouldn't have children, it should not be. I know plenty of younger people who have no business with children, but they have them anyway then abandon, abuse, neglect, and even kill those children. This is why America has so many children in foster care or given up for adoption.