Bousada with her twins
It's every parent's worst nightmare: Dying before your children are grown. Maria del Carmen Bousada died on Saturday in Spain, leaving her two twin toddlers without a mother. Bousada is believed to be the world's oldest new mother after conceiving her twins via in vitro fertilization at the age of 66. She was 69 when she passed away.
There is no cause of death being released at this time, but a local newspaper reported that after giving birth she had been diagnosed with a tumor of some sort. There is also no word on who will care for her twins, Pau and Christian, who will turn 3 in December. Bousada helped ignite a firestorm of controversy regarding the age limit of in vitro fertilization for women. She admitted to lying about her age and said she was 55, which was the cut-off age for women at the Pacific Fertility Clinic in Los Angeles where she received treatment at. Her mother lived to be 101, and Bousada believed there was no reason she would not live to that old either.
Her death will undoubtedly spark up the age limit controversy and the ethics of whether it should be allowed as an option for women of a certain age. Bousada certainly had no qualms about having children later in life as well as no regrets about the deception she made to gain the treatments. "Often circumstances put you between a rock and a hard place, and maybe things shouldn't have been done in the way they were done, but that was the only way to achieve the thing I had always dreamed of, and I did it," she said in an interview with the Associated Press.
The fact is, parents can die at any moment and at any age. Even a healthy 30-year-old woman may have children via IVF and then die in a car accident when the children are young. Should there be an age-limit on IVF treatments and if so, what should it be? Is 55 still too old?
Source: MSNBC
Related:
66-year-old women set to become the U.K.'s oldest mother
Comments