Science can do amazing things. But just because it can doesn’t mean it should.
A Spanish woman who gave birth to twins when she was 67 has died, leaving her two young boys orphaned just two-and-a-half years after becoming the world’s oldest mother.
Carmen Bousada, who lied about her age to receive donor eggs and sperm in the U.S., died this week at age 69 after from cancer. It is not clear who will raise her 2-year-old sons, Cristian and Pau.
Her brother told Spanish newspaper El Periodico de Catalunya her illness was “very hard, she was in a really bad state recently.”.
In an interview with Spanish television in December 2007, shortly after she was diagnosed with cancer, she said family members could care for them if she died.
“I have a nephew, and their godfather is very good with the children. They are not going to be alone,” she said at the time.
Bousada gave birth on December 26, 2006, at a hospital in Barcelona after being artificially inseminated at a fertility clinic in Los Angeles.
She told the clinic she was 55, the facility’s maximum age for single women receiving in-vitro fertilization. The case ignited fierce debate over how much responsibility fertility clinics have over their patients.