Just a day before last New Year’s Eve, the editorialists at the Globe and Mail announced that the birth of twins to a 59-year-old British woman on Christmas Day “triggered ethical alarm bells around the world.”  (Although nobody commented on the birth date, I would be willing to bet that it was a deliberately timed, induced delivery.)  I think the writers had either celebrating early or were still imbibing the Christmas eggnog rather too freely.

I don’t know how loudly those ethical alarm bells were supposed to have rung, for me they were drowned out by the number of newspaper columnists who loudly hailed this further giant step towards equality between men and women.  Just in case you think that I’m still dipping into the eggnog, let me explain that the feminists (pro-abortion, naturally) are cheering because technology can now bypass menopause, allowing older women to give birth.  (They neglect to remind people that the child is not genetically related to the mother, who is in fact a surrogate, since she has to rely on donated ova.)  This is called equality because men’s fertility is not affected by age, and several columnists just could not resist recalling that Pierre Trudeau fathered a child at 71.

Issue is simple

These are generally the same writers who drive us all to distraction by shrieking that biology is no longer destiny as they gleefully promote the latest contraceptive gimmick, the freedom of sterilization, or the newest abortion technique.  These are the same people who for years and years have whined that only the most backward, obviously male-dominated, women seek motherhood in the first place.  Perhaps I’m missing something obvious here, but the logic does not seem to hang together.

Actually, the whole issue is really very simple.  God (or nature, if you don’t like thinking God has anything to do with the way we are) designed the human female to have a limited span of fertile years.  Like all the other decisions God made about us way back then, they are for our benefit.  The fact that we do not necessarily understand why we are made this way does not mean a darn thing.

Now I do not agree with the British ethicist who is quoted as saying this case borders on “the Frankenstein syndrome” – no baby deserves to be likened to a fictional monster.  But I do agree with Virginia Bottomley, the British Secretary of Health who said, “Women do not have the right to a child.  The child has a right to a suitable home.”  Needless to say, Mrs. Bottomley was severely reprimanded by our media gurus.

Ego and arrogance

They can argue all they want about a child born to an experienced and supposedly mature woman, with money in the bank and a younger husband, having a better start in life than the child born to an adolescent single woman who has little education and lives on welfare.  The fact remains that neither situation is ideal.  No doubt there are wonderful older women who will do an exemplary job of raising a healthy, well-adjusted child, just as there are young women who overcome great adversity in bringing up their children.  There is a world of difference in meeting the challenges of difficult circumstances and deliberately setting out to create an unnatural situation.

The press reports that here is at least one other older woman now pregnant and expecting this June – this time a 61-year-old in New York.  No doubt there will be others.  The Globe editorial concluded that if older women want babies they should be allowed to go for it, as long as they pay for the In Vitro Fertilization procedure themselves and have “suitable discussions with their doctors.”  (I can’t imagine the feminists swallowing that one for long.  Just imagine, the arrogance of a male doctor assessing whether or not a woman should have a child!)

What this all boils down to, though, is ego and arrogance.  The ego and supreme selfishness of the woman who views the child as just another object to enhance her image of herself.  And the arrogance of the scientists who believe that human beings are just another laboratory experiment, and that just because technology allows something to be done, it should be done.