Septuagenarian Gives Birth to Twins Via IVF!

While browsing websites this afternoon, I stumbled across an article from this summer (July 24, 2008) that actually went as far as to shock my conscience. Thus, I decided to throw it out here, because I’d love to see what kind of reactions this piece evokes from everyone else.

In July, Omkari Panwar gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, at a hospital in India via in vitro fertilization. What is newsworthy about this? What shocked my conscience? Mrs. Panwar is 70 years old, and her husband is in his mid-seventies. The article, which can be found at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25837220, goes on to discuss the origins of in vitro fertilization (IVF), but for the purposes of this blog, if your curiosity is piqued, you can read about the origins in the original article, for I am not going to address that here. What the article deftly highlights, however, is how the fears associated with IVF have changed since its inception. Initially, there were worries that IVF would produce deformed babies and that it was unsafe. Today, the fears are an entirely different monster, as highlighted by Omkari Panwar’s story. When is IVF okay? Who decides? Should the child’s rights be factored into the decision? Should the parent’s motives?

Admittedly, the Panwars’ case has another layer to it. The Panwars sought to have additional children as septuagenarians due to the cultural bias in India that sons are better than daughters. It is not that the Panwars have had boys in the past; they have female daughters and even female grandchildren. But now they wanted a boy. While I try to view this in a light most favorable to Mrs. Panwar’s plight, and while I struggle to realize that the cultural value judgment placed on her shoulders must indeed be significant if she was ready to go through childbirth again at the old age of 70, I cannot feel anything but remorse for her newborn twins. Her children are likely to lose their parents anytime in the near future. And even if the Panwars are lucky enough to live extremely, extremely long lives, will they really truly be able to care for their children in 10 years? Maybe even in 5 years? Raising children is something that is exhausting for parents forty years younger than the Panwars. Can these stark facts really be outweighed by the fact that Mrs. Panwar’s culture emphasizes the value of male children? Resoundingly, I say it cannot. I am appalled at the selfishness of their decision.

So this gets back to my initial questions. Who should decide when IVF can be used? Is it entirely the right of the parents to decide? Should the doctors be in a position to refuse treatment to potential parents? And if so, under what circumstances? Can they look to the parents’ motives? This would place an immense burden on doctors to make value judgments about people and families. Is this fair? I think not. But I do think there needs to be some sort of check on the parents’ access to IVF, if only for very special cases like this one. Perhaps legislation is the best route (I think it’s the only feasible one) to restrict IVF from being used in certain cases. Defining the law would be incredibly difficult and would not doubt meet significant challenges (I can foresee the due process claims being filed already…), but does this situation not demand some sort of scrutiny? I think it does. This entire scenario just reinforced to me, the casual reader, how issues with new treatment, technology, and so on, evolve, and frankly, can become more troublesome than at the outset.