FRANCE: Furor after 59-year-old gives birth to triplets

. PARIS, France (Shanghai Daily), September 9, 2008: A 59-year-old woman has given birth to triplets at a Paris hospital after seeking fertility treatment in Vietnam, a hospital spokeswoman said yesterday. News of the woman's pregnancy has drawn widespread criticism in the French media since it was made public last week. It is illegal in France to provide fertility treatment to women who are no longer at an age when they can procreate naturally. "On this particular point, scientific progress is not good for mankind," said Andre Vingt-Trois, a Catholic archbishop, quoted by yesterday's Le Parisien newspaper. The woman gave birth by Caesarean section at the Cochin hospital late on Saturday night, a spokeswoman said. She had two boys who weighed 2.3 kilograms and 2.1 kilograms, and a girl who weighed 2.4 kilograms. The mother and the babies were all in good health. The hospital declined to give any further details. There has been a trickle of births by women in their late 50s and in their 60s in various countries since 1994, when Italian fertility doctor Severino Antinori caused an international controversy by helping Rosanna Della Corte of Canino, Italy - then aged 62 - give birth to a baby after their first son was killed when a car crashed into his motorcycle in 1991. Della Corte decided to attempt to have a second child when the couple tried to adopt, but were unable to, as under Italian law an adoptive parent could be no more than 40 years older than their potential child. At the time, Corte became the oldest known woman to give birth to a child. Agencies Copyright © 2001-2008 Shanghai Daily Publishing House See earlier report in Seniors World Chronicle