New Delhi (AFP) - Doctors in India on Wednesday raised
ethical and health concerns after a woman gave birth to her first child in her
70s, following two years of IVF treatment.
Daljinder Kaur gave birth last month to a healthy boy
after falling pregnant by her 79-year-old husband, following fertility
treatment at a northern Indian clinic.
Kaur said the couple, married for 46 years, was overjoyed
at finally having their first child after enduring years of taunts in a country
where infertility is sometimes seen as a curse from God.
“I feel blessed to be able to hold my own baby. I had lost
hope of becoming a mother ever,” Kaur told AFP from her home in Amritsar city.
“I used to feel empty. There was so much loneliness.”
Kaur put her age at about 70 – a common scenario in India,
where many people don’t have birth certificates – while the clinic said in a
statement that she was 72.
But fertility expert Sunil Jindal raised questions about
the future of a child born to elderly parents, as well as health issues for the
mother.
“There are ethical issues. In my opinion it is unfair to
do such a procedure on a woman who is over 60,” Jindal told AFP.
“The sheer fact that a woman in her 70s has to carry the
weight of a child in her womb for nine months is stressful.
"Then the question comes how are the parents going to
look after the baby? That is also quite a task.”
The clinic, in the northern state of Haryana, told AFP the
couple’s baby was conceived using Kaur’s egg and her husband’s sperm after two
previous unsuccessful attempts.
But Britain’s the Guardian newspaper on Wednesday quoted
the clinic’s doctor saying donor eggs were used. The doctor declined to comment
to AFP on Wednesday, saying it was not ethical of him to do so.
Gynecologists Anshu Jindal, based in Meerut not far from
the capital, said she tried to discourage women over the age of 60 from
undergoing fertility treatment – for the sake of both mother and child.
“According to me it is not an age to have a baby. It will
take a toll,” she told AFP.
The clinic’s doctor told AFP on Tuesday that tests showed
Kaur was medically fine to carry the baby through pregnancy.
The case is not the first in India – a 72-year-old woman
from Uttar Pradesh state reportedly gave birth to twins in 2008, also through
IVF.
https://www.yahoo.com/beauty/indian-woman-70-gives-birth-first-baby-100752048.html
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