Oldest woman to give birth

Oldest woman to give birth (67) has twin girls
Bucharest: A 67-year-old Romanian yesterday became the oldest woman known to have given birth, although one of her twin girls died soon afterwards. Adriana Iliescu, a retired university professor, had undergone fertility treatment for nine years before succeeding in becoming pregnant. Realitatea TV said she had given birth to twin girls, one of whom had died almost immediately. The surviving infant, which weighed 1.4kg, was in good health. The previous record was held by an Italian woman who gave birth to a baby boy at the age of 62. Doctors had implanted the egg of a young Italian woman which had been fertilised by her husband's sperm. Doctors who handled the Iliescu pregnancy maintained total secrecy about the case, which only became known to the Romanian public from one exclusive interview Iliescu gave on Realitatea last month.

Retired: In the appearance, the retired professor said she "had not been able to resign myself to not having a child". "I always dreamt of being a mother and now I'm experiencing the happiest time of my life, waiting to bring my twin daughters into the world," the greying academic had said. Iliescu said she did not feel the effects of her relatively advanced years. The case has sparked widespread controversy. "She will be too old to see her children grow up," lamented the newspaper Cotidianul, questioning the ethics of doctors who consented to her being artificially inseminated. But the Church has adopted a conciliatory position. "The Bible preaches love and procreation at whatever age," said the press office of Patriarch Bogdan Teleanu, head of the Romanian Orthodox Church. Lucia Cornea, of Romania's centre for assisted reproduction, does not agree: "It's a scandal." Gheorghe Borcean, the head of the Romanian medical profession's ethics committee, criticised the mystery that had shrouded the case." A case of such prominence should require academic debates and not just one single television report," he said. - Sapa-AFP Published on the web by Mercury on January 17, 2005.
© Mercury 2005. All rights reserved.

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That's just wrong.