
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 1, 1994                   TAG: 9401010052
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Medium

BIRTH FOR OLDER WOMEN CALLED MATTER OF EQUALITY

An Italian doctor who helped a 59-year-old woman become the oldest on record to give birth says there is nothing wrong with giving older women the same reproductive freedom as men.

"This is a big victory for women," Dr. Severino Antinori said. "Women are discriminated against. Men can be 100 and have children. This is why the entire male world is against me."

Menopause has long stood between older women and childbearing. But Antinori has erased that natural barrier by implanting women who are no longer menstruating with donated, fertilized eggs.

Critics contend that many middle-aged mothers won't live long enough to rear the children they bear, and that they are too old for the emotional and physical strains of pregnancy.

But Antinori said the ability of middle-aged men to look after their children isn't questioned to the same extent.

He said the right of any woman to have children transcends ethical debates.

"It's an individual freedom that no one can touch," he said Thursday.

The debate over engineering births expanded Friday with reports out of Italy that a black mother gave birth after being impregnated with an egg from a white woman. The egg was fertilized with sperm from the black woman's white husband. Critics said the birth was a first step toward choosing specific characteristics for children.

Dr. Cesare Aragona told the Rome daily La Repubblica that the 37-year-old mother was rendered infertile by a tumorous growth. She and her husband wanted another child, and since they were able to select the donor of the eggs, they chose a white woman for "practicality," the newspaper quoted the doctor as saying.

After the 59-year-old British woman gave birth to twins on Christmas Day, British Health Secretary Virginia Bottomley said the treatment would not be allowed in Britain for post-menopausal women. Others in the British medical community also have come out against the technique.

Among Antinori's supporters is Dr. Robert Edwards, a Cambridge University professor whose technique led to the birth of the first test-tube baby in 1978.

In a 1993 piece in the British medical publication Human Reproduction, Edwards notes that women who no longer are menstruating do not appear to have greater physical risks in pregnancy than women who conceive naturally. And he wrote that using eggs from younger women helps avoid risks to the fetus common with older mothers.

Antinori sets conditions for his patients: They must have a life expectancy of at least 20 more years, based on their age and family history, must be non-smokers and pass psychological and physical tests.

Given the limit he has set for life expectancy, he says it is unlikely he would treat a woman past her mid-60s.

by CNB