Sylvia Braithwaite was 46 years old when her dreams of getting pregnant fell to pieces.
Sitting in her doctor's office, she listened as he told her it was time to give up. After two years of expensive fertility treatments and an international search for a donor egg, Ms. Braithwaite's physician said it was time to face facts: her biological clock had run out. Her hormones were changing, and she would likely enter the early stages of menopause in a few years. A pregnancy would do more harm than good, he warned.
Ms. Braithwaite and her husband, Michael, had been trying to conceive since just before their wedding – she was 44, he was 36, and it was the second marriage for both. After a failed round of in-vitro fertilization, the Braithwaites went into debt to pay an agency in Argentina $10,000, with plans to travel there to have an egg from a paid donor implanted in Ms. Braithwaite's womb.
But when her doctor advised Ms. Braithwaite to stop trying to get pregnant, the couple cancelled the procedure and told the agency they wanted their money back, minus a $4,000 deposit. After more than a year of wrangling, they've only been able to get about $1,000 back.
“I don't want any other people trying to have a baby to get scammed like that,” Ms. Braithwaite said. “They're under enough pressure.”
The number of women in Canada having children in their 40s has tripled in the past 30 years, but not without a great deal of help. Many have turned to in-vitro fertilization to facilitate the process using their own eggs, but the practice has a low success rate since the quality of women's ova deteriorates quickly after the age of 35.
There's only so much we can do in spite of all the technology. — Fertility specialist Dr. Marjorie Dixon
A very small number might be fortunate enough to know someone willing to donate an egg out of goodwill, the only kind of egg donation allowed under Canadian law. Those without a charitable donor, like the Braithwaites, look overseas for a paid donor at their own risk.
Through donor eggs, rare cases of women giving birth well into their 50s and even 60s have made headlines, sparking debate over just how old is too old to be a mother. Last week an expert panel recommended that Ontario's health-care plan cover the cost of IVF for anyone unable to conceive on their own, including same-sex couples and people who want to be single parents. But not for women over 42.
The panel members say it's a cost-benefit decision based on the very low chances of a woman over 42 getting pregnant through IVF, not a judgment on the ideal age for parenting. Indeed, if the recommendations are implemented by the Ontario government – they're currently under review – women over 42 will still be able to get fertility treatments provided they pay for them.
But age limits on parenthood are reasonable, says Margaret Somerville, director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law. Dr. Somerville says only a minority of ethicists subscribe to “absolute rights to reproductive freedom,” which would permit a woman to have a baby at any age by any means – from cloning to paying a surrogate to give birth.
Dr. Somerville believes there should be limits on who gets public funds, including the cut-off at 42. Only about 40 per cent of women who get pregnant after 42 carry their baby to term.
“It's discrimination in a certain sense, but the only way to handle it ethically and fairly is to put the child first,” Dr. Somerville said. “Everyone else's claims are secondary.”
