UK: More than 100 new moms over 50 last year

Post-menopausal women are having babies more often in the United Kingdom, thanks to government regulations that allow private fertility clinics to treat patients of any age. The National Health Service (NHS) will not accept patients older than 39, but private clinics are allowed to use their discretion and decide independently which women can receive fertility treatments. The Office of National Statistics showed than over a 100 women over 50 become mothers after IVF in the last year. Of those, 14 women were over 55. Not long ago, one of the United Kingdom's government agencies opened a debate about free fertility treatments for post-menopausal women.

The National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) argued that setting an age limit for invitro fertilization could be seen as discriminatory. This despite the fact that obese women have been told to lose weight before qualifying for fertility treatments on the NHS for a long time. Of course, these newly released statistics show that allowing women over 50 to receive IVF on the NHS would increase the number of children born to women who could be grandmothers dramatically. Personally, I believe that this raises a number of ethical questions. I understand what it feels like to want a child more than anything in the world, and not being able to realize this wish due to fertility problems. But who has the best interest of such children at heart?

You don't have to be a mathematical genius to be able to conclude that children of mothers who were post-menopausal when they were born are much more likely to have to deal with losing a parent before they even reach adulthood. For a real-life example of this, just look at the world's older IVF mother (72) dying. This woman's IVF child was only 18 months old. What do you think about this? Should women over 50 be able to receive IVF? What should cut-off age be, if any?