High-Tech Method Has 53-Year-Old Expecting Twins : New Technology Has Grandmother Expecting Twins

A 53-year-old grandmother is expected to give birth to twins in December at Martin Luther Hospital in Anaheim, making her one of the oldest women so far to become pregnant after menopause with the assistance of medical technology.

Hospital spokesman Dennis Gaschen declined to identify the prospective mother until she is introduced at a press conference Monday. He said only that the woman, who has three grown children and three grandchildren, wanted another child after marrying a second husband who is 31 and childless.

She will become one of only a handful of women 50 or older throughout the nation who have given birth as the result of a technique whereby eggs extracted from a younger woman are fertilized and placed in the womb.

Probably the first such birth to be reported was that of Jonie Mosby Mitchell, a grandmother from Ventura, who had a baby boy March 31 at the age of 52 after participating in a fertility program sponsored by the University of Southern California at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles.

Dr. Mark Sauer, who has pioneered the use of egg donations for older women at USC, said another of his patients, age 55, gave birth in Los Angeles, and a 52-year-old woman from New York had twins. He said there is also a report, as yet unconfirmed in medical literature, of a 62-year-old woman who gave birth this year in Italy.

At the UCI Medical Center, which operates another large fertility medicine program, Dr. Ricardo Asch said that in the last two years 10 patients have come to him who are 50 or older, and about half have succeeded in becoming pregnant with donated eggs.

Sauer and Asch said the biggest barrier to an older woman bearing a child has been the aging of her eggs or the shutdown of her ovaries, making her unable to produce eggs at all. But that shortcoming may be overcome with the donation of eggs from a younger woman.

Since this technology was introduced in 1985, researchers say, the age ceiling has been lifted, making it possible for women to become parents much later in life, as men always have.

“We don’t know how far we can push this. The only thing we have learned is that apparently the human uterus doesn’t age,” Asch said. A major advantage of the donor technique, he said, is that using the egg from a younger woman eliminates the risk older women would otherwise have of giving birth to children with chromosome abnormalities linked with such serious problems as Down’s syndrome.

However, the technology is not without controversy. Obstetrician-gynecologists warn that older women are more prone to hypertension and other physical ailments that can cause complications during pregnancy.

Some psychiatrists and sociologists worry about added stresses that will be placed on the child of parents who become elderly even before the child reaches adulthood.

And others, including the Catholic Church, admonish that the use of donor eggs, in effect making the birth mother a surrogate, will confuse the identities of parent and child and undermine the sexual bond between husband and wife.

Dr. Michelle Harrison, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine who writes about the effects of reproductive technology on the family, questions the wisdom of society investing money in high-tech reproductive technology that will be accessible only to relatively wealthy couples.

Sauer said USC charges about $11,000 for each implantation attempt, and it usually takes about two attempts to achieve pregnancy. But often patients have tried many other therapies before resorting to egg donations.

“It is questionable whether we should be putting our medical resources to that when we still have one of the highest infant mortality rates among industrialized nations,” Harrison said. She added: “What if that energy were applied to finding ways to have children adopted who need to be adopted?”

But those who have become mothers and fathers again or for the first time in their later years as a result of egg donations contend that it was well worth any sacrifice.

Donnie Mitchell, 46, said after his wife, Jonie, who turned 53 in August, went through menopause, they adopted a baby girl. They were considering another adoption, he said, when she read about the egg donor program at Good Samaritan and decided to try. Since the baby was born, he said, “she is as happy as a lark” and so is he.

While women in their 50s who become pregnant attract the most attention, doctors agree that by far the greatest demand for the use of egg donations comes from women in their 40s who may have postponed marriage or motherhood just a few years too long.