3B - Female Age of Menopause Is a Fair Limit for Ovum Donation

Summary

There is very little that is ‘fair’ in human reproduction. It is not ‘fair’ that at the age of 38 a woman has about 2 years to have a reasonable chance of a healthy pregnancy, whereas a man has 2 or 3 decades. It is not ‘fair’ that even in the ‘developed’ world women risk dying in pregnancy, during delivery or soon after, whereas I have never heard of a man dying as a result of becoming a father! In the ‘developing’ world the risks for mothers and their babies are truly horrendous with maternal death rates that rival those of medieval Europe. This situation is all the more ‘unfair’ because women’s life expectancy is longer than men’s (a healthy baby girl born today in the UK can expect to live to 86 and be fit and active well into her 70s). Our society has developed so rapidly since the Second World War only because women have been prepared to take on two jobs: worker and mother. The ‘natural’ age of menopause, 51 years, has changed only slightly over the past few decades, although we now know that women who live near green parks have a later menopause (1) and women who smoke have an earlier one (2).