In December 2006, the Spanish Carmen Bousada de Lara entered the Guinness Book of Records by becoming “the oldest mother in the world”, as Wikipedia details. Her two children, premature twins, whom she named Pau and Christian, were born by caesarean section when she was 67 years old. Carmen, a native of Cádiz, had undergone in vitro treatment at a clinic in California, where she, as she recounted, she lied about her age in order to be fertilized.
As a result of her experience, Carmen also became, according to the press, “a staunch defender of the rights of older mothers.” However, she did not have much time to claim such rights: she died in 2009 of a tubo-ovarian tumor, detected shortly after the birth of Pau and Christian. The children were two years old when her mother died and they went to live with a first cousin. Carmen, who enjoyed logical popularity in the media, had assured in an interview that she was not worried about what would happen to the twins if she died: they had “very young” godparents who would take care of them.
Nothing is known about Pau and Christian. Perhaps in a few years they will tell their version of the story. Now, the news is focused on the figure of Ana Obregón, one of the most famous women in Spain, who has decided to be her mother at the age of 68. Unlike Carmen, she has done it via surrogacy. That is to say, she has paid an amount of money to another woman, through an agency, to gestate and give birth to a girl who, according to US law, is the daughter of Ana Obregón.
All of Spain knows of the death of his only son, almost three years ago, due to cancer. His pain, documented on the cover of the Hello! aroused unconditional sympathy. However, her decision to become the mother of a baby, at almost seventy years old, has caused a certain stupor. Outrage, even. “It annoys me; It seems crazy to me,” a woman, a little older than Obregón, who also lost a son, told me. For her, such a misfortune does not justify becoming a mother at an age in which what would correspond is to be a grandmother: “I am not Catholic, but I think that things like that should be prohibited. Is everything bought? ”, She wonders.
The answer is affirmative: “Yes, everything is market. Moral or aesthetic ties don’t matter,” says Francesco Magris, professor of economics at the University of Tours in France. “In surrogacy there are even catalogues, and a young, blonde woman is worth more than a forty-year-old woman.” But beyond the runaway offer, the underlying issue, he emphasizes: “It is that today needs are confused with desires: ‘I want to be a mother, even though I am already an old woman’, ‘I want to sleep with a twenty-something, even if I am a old man of eighty’…”. In the hyper-capitalist society, every wish has to become a right and, in cases like this, where the market prevails even over nature, anything is possible. “But to live”, reflects Magris, “is to learn that not everything can be… To what extent can your will prevail over other issues?”, he asks himself.
These issues are what Magris calls “inalienable rights”. That is, the rights that cannot be bought, such as the right to freedom or to vote. Here, he assures, the former would be questioned: “Because although transactions such as surrogate pregnancy are justified with phrases such as ‘they have signed a contract’ or ‘they help each other’, in my opinion, the woman who rents her womb for nine months is a subjected woman. Whoever hires her can control her body (what she eats, what she does, what time she goes to bed), because she has her child in her womb. And that, having control over someone’s body, is called slavery and is prohibited.”
Magris’s field is economics, and he does not want to give “moral qualifications”, but in a matter of this type there are ethical factors: “On the one hand, it seems that everything has a price and that you have to let the market do its job but, from time to time, the market must be stopped in the name of something more important than commercial logic”. Because if not, he adds: “I could sell you my eye, because ‘it is my will’ and you can buy it, because it is your wish. And if there is no third party to say ‘No, your eye is not for sale’, there is no control”.
Norbert Bilbeny, professor of ethics at the University of Barcelona, ??also sees moral issues in a situation like the one Ana Obregón has created, which, he says, surprises him: “Not so much because of her age, but also because of the fact that she is ma’am, who had such a hard loss, has decided this… I am surprised by the psychological environment”.
For Bilbeny, this is, without a doubt, “an ethical dilemma, between freedom and responsibility, where there is also the interest of the minor.” The latter is a key aspect: what will happen when he is 20 years old and his mother is 88? “At the very least, he will have a moral right to ask, and who knows if he can’t make a claim, as is happening with the children of artificial insemination donors.”
Bilbeny believes that everyone has the freedom to do what they want: “But, assuming that one is free, the question is: Is that person responsible for their actions? This is already more debatable”. However, this philosopher would not want to enter into “a very categorical moral judgment” on this case. What he is clear about is that “what we cannot do is discriminate against her as a woman.” He has no doubt that, in situations of this type, the judgment is issued more forcefully if it is a mother, not a father, and that, he warns: “It is discriminating, to the detriment of women.”
When asked why older women are discriminated against when they decide to become mothers, the teacher and journalist Juana Gallego, an expert in gender and communication, refers to “mental structures” that have been maintained century after century and are difficult to dismantle. . “In general, men do not have a special age to be fathers, they can be when they want, it is assumed that their sexual activity lasts a lifetime.” A paternity at an advanced age, she adds: “It is even seen with pride: it is not censored, while women are told phrases like ‘the rice is going to pass you’, when they are thirty years old. Therefore, when a woman decides to do something like that, and breaks with the stereotypes, the world flies into a rage”.
Having said this, Gallego points out that: “Ana Obregón has not become a mother, but has bought a baby, in a surrogate motherhood process. The reasons why she has resorted to it are another matter”.
But it is that the offer, as Magris pointed out before, is there, and continues to grow: “Today having children is no longer a matter of nature but simply a market,” Gallego agrees. “Age no longer matters, being older does not penalize you, on the contrary, what the market wants is to have people. Above all, buy it.” And there are no filters while “the woman who gestates the child is, obviously, she has to meet certain requirements.”
Consequently, it is an unequal market, in which a high purchasing and social power is necessary. This is the case of Ana Obregón and another late mother from these parts, Carmen Cervera. Baroness Thyssen adopted twin girls via surrogacy in 2007, when she was 64 years old, a process that was also duly documented by Hello! .
However, having a large capital is not always necessary: ??the aforementioned Carmen Bousada was a former employee of a department store, although she had to sell her house to pay for treatment in America. According to information at the time, becoming a mother was “her dream of hers” of hers. The dream did not last long, but she was able to make it come true thanks to the market, naturally.
