We Can, But Should We?

All of a sudden, frustrated, dissatisfied, unfulfilled and sometimes just plain unhappy women have discovered the opportunities open to them through new reproductive technologies. And, it would seem, unscrupulous medical technologists who might knew better can always be found to enable women whom nature clearly hasn't meant to bear children, to have them damn the consequences.

Women like the young, proud new mother of in-one-fell-swoop eight babies who already has six young children and who hasn't the wherewithal to care for all of them. Unable to conceive naturally, she turned to reproductive technology, and with the help of a donor, sailed through a series of single births, then twins, and finally octuplets.

Women are pretty amazing in their capabilities, but what woman exists who can perform the loving function of giving equal care to fourteen children all under the age of seven? And then there are those women whom time, fertility and opportunity passed by, now beyond childbearing age, but who see menopause as no obstacle to their yearnings, with the advent of assisted fertility options.

A 70-year-old woman in India with twins, a 67-year-old woman in Spain with twins. In vitro fertilization solved their problems of childlessness. What will solve their ageing problems as their babies grow into infancy then childhood and suddenly are bereft of their mother's presence?

Even if the mother managed to live to a ripe old age, the child would have the benefit of an elderly mother whose physical capacities and patience would be strained by the ongoing needs, physical and emotional, of a developing child. Now, another woman, a 60-year-old woman who travelled to India for treatment, returning to Canada, pregnant.

India, of all places, where, during Indira Gandhi's infamous "State of Internal Emergency" clamp-down on civil liberties - and her government's push to round up poverty-stricken villagers, beggars living on the streets, those vulnerable dregs of society unable to defend themselves - to round out the government's mandatory sterilization program ensured control of unwanted births in particular segments of society.

Now in India, enterprising medical tourism can avail the foreign moneyed with any kind of medical and surgical procedures not readily available in peoples' home countries. Certainly in Canada, no ethical fertility clinic would treat a 60-year-old woman for fertility. Chronologically, physically, women were not meant by nature to go through the hormone-disrupting procedure of pregnancy.

Ranjit Hayer, the new mother of twins through artificial insemination, was assailed by a number of complications including gestational diabetes and high blood pressure. Utilizing, in the process scarce medical-health resources in an economy already hard-put to look after the needs of Canadians. And the question remains: how will a 60-year-old, however fit, muster the energy to care for two babies?

As a 60-year-old I looked after my granddaughter while my daughter was outside the home throughout the working week. I had eight hours each day of nursery care for an infant that developed into eight hours a day of physical activity and emotional support for an active youngster, until we were able to place her in a pre-school setting for half-days at age four.

I was exhausted, unable to plan anything for myself other than to look to the nurturing of a young child, after having brought my own three up to maturity when I was young. As an older person, having experienced the normal period of child-raising and finally achieving some measure of time for self, I discovered few opportunities for activities outside providing for a child's needs.

As much as one loves the child, the fact is an older person hasn't the needed energy and patience that a younger woman would have. That realization can be demoralizing and upsetting to one's sense of coping, of enjoyment of life. And it gives short shrift to the child's needs. I had the responsibility of my granddaughter's daily care until she became nine and I 69.

And I happen to be a physically fit senior, an alert and energetic individual, patient enough, and as deeply engaged in the need to stimulate a young mind as anyone could be. I had some relief from the constant need to be on duty to a child's needs when her mother picked our granddaughter up at five each day. These older mothers will have no such relief.

Their choices for themselves are unrealistic. They cannot be assured that they will be able to accompany their children into adulthood. Their selfless acts of sacrificing themselves to bear children are in reality the ultimate in selfishness.