Is it really never too late to have a new baby?

Sending the wrong message
In addition, there is a special problem created when an older, single woman has twins. When old men have babies they usually do so with much younger wives, so at least one parent will be present if the father dies. There may be no one around to be the parent if an older woman gets sick, becomes disabled or worse, dies.

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This is why most nations, which have laws governing the use of reproductive technology, would not have allowed a 57-year-old single mom to become pregnant. This is why adoption agencies view requests from people who are single and much older with wariness. And this is why the ethics guidelines of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine discourage what the doctors in this case have done.

St. James said that it is never too late to have a child. And the miracles of reproductive technology do appear to support her statement. The parade of fifty-something celebrity moms who proclaim their pregnancies on the morning talk shows could give any young woman the impression that there is no rush to reproduce because medical technology can bail them out if need be.

But this is simply not true. St. James had to use donor sperm and an egg, which was "donated" but more accurately bought from an anonymous stranger. The doctors could not create a baby biologically related to her but instead used reproductive technology to achieve what is in effect a new form of adoption. Adoption is a wonderful thing but many people want to have a genetic relationship with their children if possible and that is not something that today’s reproductive technology can do for women in their fifties and older.

It is not true that it is never too late to have your own biological baby and younger women need to understand that fact.

A legal minefield
Keep in mind, too, that when donor sperm and eggs are used a potential legal minefield is created. If either the source of the sperm or the eggs decides to assert parental rights over St. James’ twins they will likely be successful. A court in Erie, Pa., has just ruled that a woman hired by a single man as a surrogate mother has just such a right. At any time in the lives of the children the person who supplied the sperm may try to enter into St. James life. And despite the anonymity of the person who supplied the egg, she might be able to litigate her way to an answer should she ever decide to find out who has "her" baby. 

Or, St. James’ children may decide at some point that they want to know, just as more and more adopted children do, who their biological parents are. Courts traditionally show little respect for anonymity in the face of such requests.

Watching a new family come into being is a wonderful thing, but let’s not kid ourselves. The new reproductive technologies raise a lot of difficult ethical questions for patients and doctors about who should use them, why and when. Society needs to be sure that as we stand in amazement watching medicine circumvent nature’s reproductive limits, nothing is done to put the best interests of the children that are created at risk.

Arthur Caplan is director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

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