When is a woman too old to become a mother?

Carey Goldberg in the Boston Globe:

A decade after the first postmenopausal mothers began making headlines, the rights and wrongs of having a late-in-life baby are still under live discussion — particularly in the wake of a new wave of age records and headlines. In January, a 66-year-old Romanian, Adriana Iliescu, gave birth to a 3.2-pound baby girl, Maria Eliza, conceived using donor eggs and sperm. In November, a New York motivational speaker named Aleta St. James gave birth to twins just before turning 57.

”It is never too late,” she declared then. ”You are never too old.”

These days, the debate is informed by considerably more medical data. Over the last decade, more than 1,000 American women in their 50s — and a handful in their 60s — have given birth to donor-egg babies, implanted in women with in vitro fertilization. In 2002, American women in their early 50s reported 286 births, and new mothers in their late 40s numbered more than 5,000.

More here.