A closer look at reproductive technology and postmenopausal motherhood

Although reproductive technologies have been aimed at young, infertile women, evidence suggests that postmenopausal women are also taking advantage of them. Dr. Eike-Henner Kluge asserts in an article in CMAJ (1994; 151; 353-355) that there are ethical reasons to deny older women access to these technologies. Kluge's comparison of postmenopausal women to prepubescent girls is fallacious. His assertion that older parents harm children by denying them a "normal" childhood is not supported by any empiric data. Kluge's distinction between medical intervention, in offering reproductive technologies to a woman in her reproductive years, and "improving on nature", by offering these technologies to postmenopausal a woman is spurious. Unless technologies that are expensive and minimally successful, such as in-vitro fertilization, are denied to everyone, there are no grounds for denying them to postmenopausal women.