Using her partner’s sperm and a donor egg, Susan Tollefsen became Britain’s oldest first-time mother at the age of 57 and sparked an ethical fire-storm. Now, 61 and separated from her partner, she says there should be an age limit for IVF treatment for women in the UK. Last November she told the UK Daily Mail:

‘Freya is without doubt the best thing I have ever done in my life, and I have no regrets. But with the benefit of hindsight I recognize that perhaps some of my critics were right.

‘I get a great emotional feeling when I look at her, and a sadness when I realise time’s running out. If I could change just one thing, I would wish to be younger so I could enjoy watching Freya grow up, get married and have children of her own.

‘If I’m completely honest, my experience has taught me that 50 should probably be the cut-off limit for having children, but until you have them it’s almost impossible to appreciate that.

‘It’s so true that you only learn by your own mistakes, and my mistake was not to have had her sooner.’

It’s still pretty rare, but more and more women today are taking advantage of modern reproductive technologies to have children long after their reproductive cycle has ended. Third party reproduction is always a controversial topic, but this brings it to a whole new level.

I won’t be able to watch it, but today Jennifer Lahl, founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network (and one of my pro-life hero’s), is supposed to be on Dr. Oz’s television talk show to discuss reproductive technologies and older women:

IVF is risky business at any age, but I’m sure the risks are much higher the older you are.

Besides the woman putting her own health at risk, she is also seriously risking the health of her future child. That is, of course, if she’s lucky enough to actually give birth at all. For women over 35, the percentage of IVF cycles that result in the birth of a child averages somewhere around the mid 20s – a rate that gets considerably smaller and smaller as you get older. Most women will go through multiple cycles before an embryo will even attach itself in the womb, let alone survive until birth – and these suckers aint cheap. Not only do they cost each woman/couple tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, but they come at the expense multiple human lives. When it comes to IVF, the number of lives lost, destroyed or ‘frozen in time’ significantly outweighs the number of human beings actually living outside the womb as a result of this technology. According to recent numbers more than thirty embryos are created for every successful birth by IVF.

How old is too old? If you ask me, IVF is wrong no matter what age you are. But, when it comes to older women, especially, there’s a reason a woman’s reproductive cycle ends when it does, and we would do well to respect the laws of nature in this regard.

Alright, this is a nice contrast to the freaking weird story I posted earlier about a virgin who is the father of 14 children via sperm donation.

Katie Davis is the mother of 14 Ugandan orphans…and she’s only 23!

After high school, Katie left home to do a year long mission trip to Uganda before college. Now she lives there full time with her 14 daughters and runs Amazima Ministries to help other poor children there.

Listen to Katie talk about adoption as a “redemptive response to tragedy”:

I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about single women (or men, for that matter) adopting, but I do find Katie’s extraordinary witness inspiring! If nothing else, at least these 14 young girls who once had no one to love and care for them, now have a woman whom they can call their mother and who, no doubt, teaches them everyday about their Father God who created their inmost being loves them eternally.

I say this is a nice contrast to my earlier post because, while adoption is making the best of less than ideal circumstances, third party reproduction intentionally puts children in a confusing (at best) situation. This story also just makes me feel a little bit better about the world after learning about such bizarreness.

Read her book: Kisses from Katie

For another inspiring adoption story a little closer to home, please read: The Clarity of Clare.

No, it’s not a miracle. Just the latest example of what a bass-ackwards, freaky-deaky world we live in.

Trent Arsenault is currently being investigated by the FDA for running a private, one-man, unregulated sperm bank from his home. On Anderson Cooper’s syndicated television show last week, Arsenault revealed that, not only has he fathered 14 children (with four on the way) through his generous sperm donation, he’s done so while remaining a virgin.

As if that wasn’t bizarre enough, Arsenault told Anderson that he considers himself to be “donor sexual”? What.the.hell, you say? Yeah, me too. “I coined this term ‘donor sexual,’ Arsenault said. “[I]t means 100 per cent of my sexual energy is for producing sperm for childless couples to have babies. So I don’t have other activity outside of that.” He says that he does not have intercourse in order to keep his sperm free from sexually transmitted diseases – “organic”, he calls it – and he predicts that he will “probably be the 40 year-old-virgin. Except I’ll have 15+ kids.” Even Cooper found this rather strange and told his audience, who applauded this line, that he wasn’t sure applause was the correct response to such an statement.

Still not weird enough for you? Apparently, this guy also uploads explicit videos of himself…er…”collecting his sperm” (if ya know what I mean) onto a popular amateur porn website…and that’s how some of his “clients” have found him.

See? Freaky-deaky, right??

“Yes, but look at all the good he’s doing helping build families,” you say. Please. Sperm donor daddies, anonymous or not, are no great service to humanity. Manufacturing life in this way is an affront to the very dignity of the children, who certainly aren’t alright with it themselves.

The sad reality behind this clever little illustration is that mothers of roughly 30% of the children conceived today will have them killed before they get a chance to see ‘Mom’ or experience life outside the womb…well, this life, anyway.

St. Francis de Sales, pray for us!

Prayer for Writers (from from Saintly Support: A Prayer for Every Problem):

May the Lord guide me and all those who write for a living. Through your prayers, St. Frances de Sales, I ask for your intercession as I attempt to bring the written word to the world. Let us pray that God takes me in the palm of His hand and inspires my creativity and inspires my success. St. Francis de Sales, you understand the dedication required in this profession. Pray for God to inspire and allow ideas to flow. In His name, let my words reflect my faith for others to read. Amen.

Also, today the Pope released his message for World Communications Day – Silence and Word: Path of Evangelization

My article published at CatholicLane.com:

Today, hundreds of thousands of pro-life people gathered in Washington D.C. for the annual March for Life, commemorating the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that struck down existing state laws protecting unborn children. For those who have been on the March or seen footage of it on EWTN (you can hardly see it anywhere else!) it’s hard not to take note of the youthfulness of the pro-life movement.

The majority of those in attendance at the March for Life in D.C. every year are high school and college aged, and lately we have even seen pre-teens get in on the pro-life activism action. No doubt this baffles some people who see abortion as a “reproductive choice” that gives young people (who just cannot control their sexual desires) the “freedom” to have meaningless sex without limit or consequence. Who wouldn’t want that?! But, when you realize that a significant portion of your generation has been killed off, it has an effect on you.

It’s pretty sobering to know that when I was conceived, my mother had the legal choice to have me killed before I was born. What I and many people my age and younger realize is that to be born after 1973 means that we are lucky to be alive.

I am certain that this is why a growing number of us are so actively pro-life. Any one of us could easily have been one of those 54 MILLION children who have lost their lives to abortion in the last 39 years, so it is not hard for us to see that children conceived today need our voices and our help. We are a generation lucky (and grateful) to be alive and we survived to be a voice for our voiceless brothers and sisters who aren’t so lucky.

Thanks to all the young people who turned out in record numbers yet again this year to tell the Nation:

You will NOT silence my message
You will NOT mock my God
You will STOP killing my generation

You march for nothing less than our future. God bless you all! And, please, bring that enthusiasm home with you and continue to be a witness for goodness and life in your hometowns.

I couldn’t be at the march today, so I did my own little “mini-march” on the trail this morning, praying my rosary as I rolled along for the safety of the March for Life pilgrims and an end to abortion. And I was struck by how appropriate it was that the Joyful Mysteries were the mysteries of the day. The Joyful Mysteries are so profoundly pro-life. First there is the unwavering “yes” of a young Jewish girl to a daunting and difficult proposal. Then, of course we reflect on the conception and birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Even the in-utero gymnastics of the unborn John the Baptist make it in to our reflection in the second mystery of Mary’s visitation to Elizabeth.

I realize that the day is winding down, but, if you have the time, please, take 15 minutes and pray a rosary to end abortion. Reflect on the mystery of the incarnation which reveals the incomparable value of every human person and pray for those whose lives have no value in the eyes of the world. Ask Our Lady to give all women the courage to accept the gift of life in difficult circumstances and imitate her example of authentic femininity. And, finally, pray for the safe travel of all of those heading home from D.C. today!

If you have some time today between now and 5:00 pm, tune in to the First Annual Conference on Medical Advances in Prenatal Diagnosis by the the Council on Poor Prenatal Diagnoses and Therapeutic Interventions. Click here for the live feed.

The conference, which is the brainchild of Dr. Gerard Nadal and a collaboration between Med Students for Life, Family Research Council, the Archdiocese of Washington and Leticia Velasquez, who co-founded KIDS (Keep Infants with Down Syndrome), a working group formed around the idea of having a full day medical conference for medical professionals and the public alike, brings together professionals from many different specialty areas, including genetic researchers, ob/gyn physicians, developmental pediatricians, hospital nursing staff, medical genetic counselors and medical students. Their goals are to:

-affirm the life and dignity of all persons, especially those diagnosed prenatally with a disability or lethal condition
-review how information about prenatal diagnoses of disability or lethal condition is currently delivered
-consider how this information might be delivered more comprehensively
-consider the impact of a new blood test for Down syndrome in obstetric care
-explain the work of the Council and its year-long engagement on prenatal diagnosis issues
-review best practices for postnatal care of infants with disabilities in perinatal hospice and in hospital, home and medical daycare settings

Increasing numbers of physicians are advising, demanding, and even coercing women to abort babies after a “poor prenatal diagnosis” with conditions such as Down Syndrome, Trisomy 18, Trisomy 13, Anencephaly, Spina Bifida, etc… Upwards of 90% of the children prenatally diagnosed with some of these conditions are killed in the womb and many health professionals consider this “progress” in eradicating disease.

Oh, they’re eradicating something, alright, but it ‘aint disease – it’s people!

Please tune in and support the Council on Poor Prenatal Diagnoses and Therapeutic Interventions as they kick off A Year of Hope and Healing, which will see more conferences and coordinated activity in bringing to the fore the many support and advocacy groups, more physicians, scientists, and ethicists. And please remember: Prenatal Genetic Testing is Not the Problem: Abortion Is!

I really wish this was getting more attention from pro-lifers…but I understand it’s a busy pro-life weekend.

Dear readers, please head over to CatholicLane and read my good friend Bill Donaghy’s touching account of how he and his wife Rebecca adopted their daughter Clare, whose mother almost aborted her:

Every parent should consider their child a gift and a miracle, because every human life is an unrepeatable, absolutely incredible, physical manifestation of God’s image and His love in this world. Our daughter Clare is a miracle because of that truth; but there’s something even more miraculous about her story that merits repeating. In this month of January, when hundreds of thousands will travel to our nation’s capitol, mourning 39 years of the legality of abortion in America, we need the clarity and light Clare brings us even more. Clare is an abortion holocaust survivor.

Before we knew she existed, our future adopted daughter was in a Planned Parenthood, in-utero, having her life scheduled to be “terminated.” Through a miracle of grace, a technician let the sound of baby Clare’s heartbeat resound in that clinical room of torture (This is not the current practice of Planned Parenthood, but there appears to be some current legislation urging this form of prenatal monitoring to be law). On hearing the rapid and muffled tones of that little heartbeat, Clare’s birth mother changed her mind about the abortion, got up, and left America’s leading abortion provider.

That’s enough of a tease – read the rest!!

Abortion advocates love to tell pro-lifers that, if we’re soooo “pro-life”, we should offer to adopt so-called “unwanted” babies who would otherwise be aborted. Well, that’s just what Bill and Rebecca have done…twice! Besides Clare, the Donaghy’s have an older son, whose adoption came about in a similar way. Bill told me:

[O]ur son’s birth mom had already had an abortion once and was on the fence when he was conceived. Through a prolife friend at his grandmothers hair salon (!) she found a resource in the prolife center across the street from Planned Parenthood!!! Praise God!

Praise God, indeed!

Bill is a speaker for the Theology of the Body Institute. Visit his blog: The Heart of Things and check out Rebecca’s CD: Expecting Grace: Songs From a Mommy’s Heart

I’m not sure if this is really something to celebrate. I’m not a big fan of the whole “fountain of youth” quest for immortality. I don’t even like the idea of all those beauty serums and creams that claim to “reverse the signs of aging.” I would rather see scientists and medical professionals focus on combating actual sicknesses and diseases, which natural aging is not. But, the science is interesting and I think once again shows the regenerative, healing power of ethical adult stem cells, something embryonic stem cell research supporters try hard to ignore or belittle:

h/t Verum Serum

“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (Rom 7:15)

I am my own worst enemy…