TOKYO (AP) -- A 60-year-old Japanese woman became the nation's oldest new mother when she gave birth to a healthy baby after undergoing in-vitro fertilization in the United States.
The announcement Monday came as increasing numbers of infertile Japanese couples eager to have children are looking overseas for infertility treatments, which are not easily available in this country.
The woman became pregnant last winter after undergoing an in-vitro fertilization procedure at the Nevada Center for Reproductive Medicine using her husband's sperm and ova donated by an Asian woman, said Yuki Sumi, head of the Information Center for Surrogate Motherhood in Tokyo, the center that coordinated the procedure.
Sumi said the woman gave birth to a healthy baby -- her first -- late last month at a hospital in downtown Tokyo, but declined to identify her, disclose the baby's gender or give the nationality of the ova donor.
She is believed to be the oldest woman ever to give birth in Japan, Sumi and Japanese news reports said.
Guinness World Records 2001 lists two 63-year-old women who have given birth: Rosanna Della Corte of Italy in 1994 and Arceli Keh of California in 1996. News reports, however, have put Della Corte's age at 62 when she gave birth.
Sumi said the 60-year-old Japanese woman got married in her late 50s and wanted to have a baby but was told by doctors that they could not help her because of her age.
Infertility treatments are still controversial in Japan even though the country is troubled by a falling birthrate and rapidly graying population.
J "It is wrong that a married couple cannot have a child just because the woman is elderly," Kyodo News agency quoted the woman as saying.
JA national debate began in May when a Japanese doctor disclosed that a surrogate mother had successfully delivered a healthy baby for the first time in Japan.
Japanese law does not prohibit that practice. But ethical standards set by the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology restrict in-vitro insemination to married couples -- effectively banning surrogate births because an egg removed for fertilization cannot be implanted in another woman.
