The news broke this week that a 66-year old businesswoman in the UK, Elizabeth Munro, will soon give birth to a child conceived via IVF. Unable to convince British doctors to treat her, she underwent fertility treatments in Ukraine.
Of course, there’s been blowback and censure and hand-wringing about what it all means. Even the Times–usually one of the more reasonable UK papers–got in on the act with a nasty bit of bias journalism that quotes bioethicist Professor Severino Antinori, who is horrified by Munro’s pregnancy. Unfortunately, when asked to elaborate on why Munro’s pregnancy is so wrong, Prof. Antinori’s logic is painfully weak (also, he sounds like a total dick):
“I am shocked by the idea of a 66-year-old woman giving birth,” he said. “I respect the choice medically but I think anything over 63 is risky because you cannot guarantee the child will have a loving mother or family.
“It is possible to give a child to the mother up to the age of 83 but it is medically criminal to do this because the likelihood is that after a year or two the child will lose his mum and suffer from psychological problems.
O RLY? Because children born to young mothers are thus guaranteed “a loving mother or family”? And their mother’s gestational age ensures that those kids never lose their moms and never suffer from psychological problems? Who are you fucking kidding, buddy? A 2-minute conversation with your local social worker or family court judge will blow away that excuse. I also love how he “respects the choice medically” but then rushes to personal judgement as fast as he possibly can.
For the record, Professor, there are millions of children in the US being raised by their grandparents–who are old and could die soon!–and neither civic leaders nor pediatricians nor the family court system consider it ”medically criminal” for those children to be cared for by loving, responsible senior citizens.
The reason these excuses don’t pass the smell test is that they are, quite simply, a big steaming pile of anti-woman bullshit. You’ll notice that our esteemed bio-ethicist doesn’t say anything at all about whether 66-year old men should be prevented from fathering children. Presumably all the same lame reasoning would apply: older fathers die sooner and might leave those poor children daddy-less (and given the disparity in life expectancy, old dads are likely to die even sooner than old moms). Shouldn’t those men be prevented from using IVF to sire children with their partners? If it’s “medically criminal” for older women, shouldn’t it be “medically criminal” for older men?” And yet, the bioethics community is completely silent on that, at least in this article and pretty much every hand-wringing screed I’ve read about Elizabeth Munro’s impending motherhood. To me, that’s the most obvious sign that this is not about bioethics or the best interests of the child; it’s all about society’s millenia-old compulsion to police what women–but not men!–do with their reproductive systems.
At the end of the day, it’s her uterus. If Munro wants to put a baby in it (or not), or take her womb out and have it bronzed, or whatever…the state–and these double-standard-bearing bioethicists–do not have the right to prevent her from doing it. And until they apply the same “ethical standards” to men, well, they’re really not “ethics” at all, are they?
Yeah, it’s her uterus. But one day a baby will be born, and it will not belong to her in the same way as her uterus does – it will be a person in its own right. Getting pregnant is not like getting a tattoo. IE: “it’s her uterus” is not quite the same as, “it’s her skin”. Or whatever. This is a potential human being we’re talking about.
Also, children are raised by their grandparents generally when something bad happens to their parents, or when they’re rejected by their parents. It’s by no means the ideal situation, and it is hardly ever planned before conception. So it’s a bit different to being like, “I might die in five years. Fuck it – I’ll have a baby anyway!”
Her life is being endangered, and so is that of her unborn child.
The Times is a pretty conservative paper, I’m not surprised that they’re taking this tack. A while back a well known British broadcaster, John Simpson, fathered a child aged 61 with his second wife and there was a fair bit of coverage and discussion about older fathers at that time. He received quite a lot of criticism – nothing like the censure that this woman is enduring, of course.
@Lu: “Her life is being endangered, and so is that of her unborn child.”
This is true of many women who are pregnant; older women, very young women, women with preexisting medical conditions or gestational illnesses like pre-eclampsia. That doesn’t give the state or anyone else the right to tell them they can’t have a child.
Interestingly re the older fathers, new research has suggested that they are more likely to have children with some form of autism. Not older mothers.
I don’t know about this story though, it has made me uncomfortable. I do think that she has every right to do as she pleases and have the baby but the whole ‘I need someone to leave my money to’ makes me a little uncomfortable. And I can’t help thinking that children are hardly the be all and end all of life and if you’ve had a great life and are now 66 why on earth do you want to complicate matters? But that apart it’s her money and her choice so i should probably stop feeling squeamish about it.
I work in a NICU – a vast majority of the mothers who have IVF using their own eggs have children who have various level of impairment.
I don’t know that I support the state telling her what to do, but I don’t see what’s wrong with saying “that’s fucked up.”
I think it’s fucked up for a man to do and I think it’s fucked up for a woman to do. I had problems with the “Octomom” sitch and I have problems with this lady too. It’s her uterus but since she’s planning to bring her pregnancy to term, eventually there will be another person effected by the decision.
More than just the OMG she might die while the baby is still a kid, I’m very much concerned with the medical risks to both baby and mom. I mean, the odds that this child will have a genetic disease are HUGE given her age, and the odds of pregnancy complications are huge as well. Much as with Octomom, who risked her kids lives by choosing to carry all 8 of them, this woman is risking this kid’s life. While I get that grandparents often raise their own grandchildren, this may very well be a special needs child. I’m not sure why accepting that this is her choice requires me to also stand by when it’s clearly not the BEST choice. Freedom from judgment is not the same as freedom from criticism, and she certainly deserves criticism for this choice. Also worthy of criticism is the cult of motherhood that would make a woman in her 60s risk her health (if nothing else was risky, going to the Ukraine for an unapproved medical procedure certainly is) just for the sake of physically bearing a child.
No, it is fucked up. But if I’m really interested in defending reproductive choice, I have to stand with women who make choices that I think are fucked up. However, I’m more concerned with an social/scientific environment that increasingly promotes child-bearing and biological children as the ne plus ultra of womanhood (that’ll be $50,000, please).
I also find it really weird that the British doc is “medically” okay with a 66 year old enduring pregnancy and birth, but not with her having/raising a child. Does not compute.
Well, I can disagree with her choices whilst defending her right to make them.
@SarahMC
“I don’t know that I support the state telling her what to do, but I don’t see what’s wrong with saying “that’s fucked up. I think it’s fucked up for a man to do and I think it’s fucked up for a woman to do.”
Yes, this!
I’m a big screaming pro choice, women can do what they choose and I have to agree that this is fucked up. Sorry folks. I work with children under three with disabilities and the odds of her having a special needs child is through the friggin roof, whether that be due to a genetic problem or massive problems with pregnancy, prematurity, etc.
As for the “I’m healthy” bullshit line. I was “healthy” when I was diagnosed with cancer at age 38 so that argument alone makes me want to scream bullshit. Not to mention the fact that this kind of thing is not cheap so it will continue to be the decision made by rich white women who don’t give a damn what I think anyway!
Sorry, she is as free to make bad choices as anyone else but this is one that I will criticize.
Baby RN, unless you left out a word and meant to say something about older mothers, I don’t believe that, and want to see numbers. I know that two studies presented in 2005 said that IVF singletons did as well as non-assisted conception singletons.
I think it’s probably a bad idea for a lot of reasons, but then again, I have friends in their 20s and 30s who are having children that, IMO, they have no business having. So I fall into the “it’s fucked up, but it’s her right” category too–for all women no matter what their ages.
Also, the arguments about how children of younger mothers are more likely to have loving parents and intact families is just bullshit.
Also, I think a lot of the criticism in the MSM smacks of OLD LAYDEEZ ARE GROSS, and a general outrage this woman is basically saying fuck off to the societal edict that says she should just stay out of sight and continue knitting and planting things in her garden all day.
HistoricUpstart, I think that’s actually a very good point and if I’m honest I wonder how much of my personal squeamishness surrounding this story is a form of similar reaction.
ps Becky – i have to admit to being amused at the idea of the Times as being one of the more reasonable UK papers given that many of the stories attributed to the Mail on sites such as Jezebel are buy-ins from the Times, which I personally think has a shall we say dodgy attitude towards women.
@emilyanne: I think it’s kind of a sliding scale with UK newspapers and their woman-hating…one that rarely slides anywhere good. The Times is definitely dodgy in its coverage of women, but these days I’m thinking even the NY Times is too. The Washington Post is about the only paper that I think has an even halfway decent record of not outright insulting women (and that’s hardly a ringing endorsement).
Sadly i think you are probably entirely correct, which is terribly depressing. What annoys me most in the UK is that a large majority of these articles are written by other women.
emilyanne – isn’t that the old Daily Mail trick? Get Asian writers to write anti-immigration articles, women to write misogynistic pieces, gay people to write anti-gay marriage polemic. it’s like an editorial extension of the ‘but my one of my best friend’s is…’ defense.
@emilyanne: You hit exactly what pisses me off about so many of those articles, esp. the ones in the Guardian. They’re invariably girl-on-girl violence. And afteriris is right, that’s a typical trick–if women write misogynist bullshit, newspaper editors think it somehow makes the article less sexist.
This isn’t a choice I would make, or one that I’d want someone I love to make. I do disagree with her choice. But it’s still her’s to make and I don’t really think it’s my place to worry. And, honestly, I don’t really know why her life is such a big deal to the rest of us.
[...] The Pursuit of Harpyness begs to differ. [...]
ok, I am the first to defend ANY woman’s right to bear children if she pleases, but what people are not aware of here of how dangerous this is to the woman and her fetus. First off, major hormone treatment must be undergone by the woman to prep her post-menopausal uterus for implantation. (BTW, it is not her egg that is used…there are none to really harvest at 66). Next is all the risk those drugs bring to a woman of that age. Next, pregnancy increases overall fluid volume of the woman, which in a 66 year old can be very taxing, if not permanantly damaging to a 66 year old woman. She is also at increased risk of deep vein thrombosis (because of her age and the pregnancy), high blood pressure…the list goes on. So if the argument is made that she shouldn’t be impregnanted via IVF, it can be made quite easily under medical prudence.