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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 5, 1994                   TAG: 9401050017
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PARIS                                LENGTH: Medium

FRANCE SEEKS LIMIT ON TEST-TUBE BABIES

Singer Yves Montand became a father at 67, and his fans were delighted. But the prospect of mothers that old has prompted the conservative government to seek a ban on test-tube babies for women who have gone through menopause.

"To have a child after menopause, thanks to assisted procreation, is to challenge time, to show no respect for biological law," said Deputy Health Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy.

"It could mean an 80-year-old mother for someone graduating from high school. You would skip a generation."

Douste-Blazy said the government would work to ensure that a bill on medical ethics, headed for the Senate after preliminary passage in the National Assembly, bans medically assisted procreation for women too old to have children normally.

Health Minister Simone Veil said Tuesday that French medical centers never would engage in procedures such as those that resulted in the Dec. 25 birth of twins to the oldest mother on record, a 59-year-old Briton, and her 45-year-old husband.

British doctors told the woman she was too old for the rigors of birth, but an Italian clinic implanted into her womb a younger woman's eggs fertilized with her husband's sperm.

The pending French legislation would not stop women from going abroad for treatment, but it would strictly prohibit medically assisted procreation for post-menopausal women in France, said Veil, a 66-year-old mother of three grown sons.

"To benefit from such treatment, women must be of an age to procreate," she said in a radio interview.

Veil said she favors tougher rules on in-vitro fertilization even for younger women and would ask the Cabinet to support requiring a court hearing any time a woman wants to be implanted with an embryo with no biological link to the parents.

by CNB