So, should a woman of 59 be offered IVF treatment? The story has been widely covered this week - a woman who already has a young child conceived in Russia is now looking to have a second child using a donor egg, and this time a London clinic has offered to treat her.
It's always a controversial issue, and raises hackles on both sides of the argument. Should you set a mandatory upper age limit for women to have a family if you don't set one for men? Why do we seem to think it is so wrong for women to have children in their fifties, when a man becoming a father at that age would not raise many eyebrows? There is of course no question of the NHS funding treatment for a woman of 59, so do we have a right to intervene if she is happy to pay and a clinic is happy to treat her? However, the most important issue here is the welfare of the child and the mother. Pregnancy and giving birth at 59 carry all kinds of age-related risks for them both. And is it fair for a child to have a mother who will be 70 by the time he or she reaches 10? What do you think?
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