Debate rages in India on IVF for women over 50
ELLENABAD, India — To see Manjeet Kaur around her little daughter is to see joy at its purest.
The 15-month-old toddles about the sprawling courtyard of her parents’ farm, her oily curls tied up in a top knot, her rubber-soled shoes squeaking. Kaur’s eyes don’t miss a thing, and they often mist up with tears.
Gurjeet is the child Kaur yearned for desperately, after 40 years of being that thing which a rural Indian woman dreads more than almost anything else — barren. She gave birth at 58 years old, with help from a controversial IVF clinic in this corner of north India that specializes in fertility treatments for women over 50.
Such treatments have become more common across the world, and they strike a cultural chord in India, where a woman is often defined by her ability to be a wife and mother. While there are no reliable statistics for how many Indian women undergo fertility treatments each year at what age, tens of thousands of IVF clinics have sprouted up in the country over the last decade.