A 60-year-old’s battle to give birth to her own grandchild

A grandmother at my age!
A grandmother at my age!

A 60-year-old British woman has been embroiled in a long legal fight over whether she can use her deceased daughter’s frozen eggs to carry her own grandchild.

Last week, the woman, identified as Mrs. M, won a crucial case in the Court of Appeal in London that could allow her to carry out what she called her daughter’s dying wish.

“They are never going to let me leave this hospital, mum,” her daughter was quoted in court as saying before she died, according to court documents. “The only way I will get out of here will be in a body bag.

“I want you to carry my babies. I didn’t go through I.V.F. to save my eggs for nothing. I want you and dad to bring them up; they will be safe with you. I couldn’t have wanted for better parents. I couldn’t have done without you.”

After a “long and brave battle,” her attorneys said, an independent regulator that had denied Mrs. M’s request to take her daughter’s eggs must now reconsider its decision, taking into account the recent ruling.

In a case legal experts have called rare, the United Kingdom’s Court of Appeal ruled Thursday that there was “sufficient evidence” that the daughter, referenced as “A,” wanted her mother to give birth to and raise her child.

Now her mother wants to use the frozen eggs — and sperm from a donor — to do just that.
READ MORE

No.

Just, no.

I’m sorry, but, NO.

This is not good. It’s not right. You all know how much I hate making moral judgments about other people’s personal lives but, in my humble opinion, what this woman wants to do is morally wrong. A 60 year old woman wanting to intentionally bring a child into the world for her and 60 year old husband to raise, is wrong. And that’s even ignoring the weirdness of using her deceased daughter’s eggs for this. But adding that factor into this is even worse.

This is not about what’s best for this potential child, or honoring their daughter’s wishes. This is about them, their own selfish desire to carry on their family genes, now that their only child is dead. People may think I’m being heartless, or that this is easy for me to say, because I don’t have children and have made it clear that I never want to have any. But I swear, I do empathize with this couple, and the pain of any parent losing a child. And I’m sure that if their daughter had had a grandchild that would ease some of the pain. But that’s not how it worked, so too bad. Now they’re just trying to replace their dead child with a new one.

And the fact that is apparently even feasible, for a 60 year old woman to give birth with donated eggs, is odd to me. Who thought this was necessary? I’ve said this before in other cases involving invitro, like with Sherri Shepherd refusing to claim a child she created with her ex-husband and a surrogate or where Sofia Vergara’s ex-fiance wants to use her embryos to have children with her against her wishes, that it seems sometimes our technology is advancing faster than our society is. We’re inventing ways to do things like, before we’ve really thought about all the potential consequences.

As I’ve said before, of all the problems the world currently has, underpopulation is not one of them. So do we need to go out of our way to ensure that someone can give birth, or have a biological child? There are plenty of unwanted children already out there, and more being born each day. If you’re one of those unfortunate people who is unable to convenience naturally, for whatever reason, maybe you should take that as a sign and strongly consider adoption a child that is already here, or become foster parent, or mentors, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, etc.

And back to this specific couple. Yeah, I know, you can’t predict the future, but even if they’re in the best of health and have plenty of money, they’re already 60. Best Case Scenario, they’ll be like 62 when their new child is born. So not only will they be creating a child who will never know it’s biological mother, but who will raised by, well, OLD PEOPLE.

Are they really going to be able to care for this child to the best of their ability? I’ve talked about being wiped out playing with my friend’s kids now, I can’t imagine trying to keep up with a 6 year old when I’m 66. You start doing the math on things like this and it’s like, okay so they’ll be 76 when the kid starts High School, 80 when he or she graduates. So, again, not only will this child never know it’s biological mother (and unlikely it’s father, since they’d use an anonymous sperm donor), but also one who very likely will have to deal with the death of their parents at a young age. No child needs that.

Again, I do sympathize with this couple’s loss, but THIS is not the answer.

2 comments

What do YOU think?

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.