TOKYO (dpa) – Yukiko Arai, a female executive at a financial institution in Tokyo, is one of many Japanese thirty-something women who want a successful career but still plan to have children when the time is right.
The right time though may not be at an age that women generally have children.In recent years the age at which Japanese women give birth has been rising, with some having children when they are in their 50s. These women have gone to the United States and have undergone in vitro fertilisation using donated eggs – a procedure banned in Japan.The percentage of advanced-age births, as defined by the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology as births to women over 35, rose from 4.7 per cent in 1970 to 10.6 per cent in 1998.In addition, Japan’s health ministry reports that the percentage of women over 40 who giving birth rose to 1.2 per cent in 1999 from 0.4 per cent in 1979.Trips to the U.S. for women in their 30s and 40s may soon be a thing of the past since the Kato Ladies Clinic in Tokyo has developed the technology to freeze ovum.While nobody has given birth using such methods yet, it would be possible in the near future for women to store their eggs when they are young and use them later.“For most people, 20s and 30s are the most important time for building their own career. However, many women in that age range feel the time pressure if they want to have a baby,” said Arai, who is in her 30s and has a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Harvard University.Masashige Kuwayama, who heads research and development at the Kato clinic, announced the new technology at a reproductive-medicine conference in San Diego, California last October.“I would like to use such methods, so that I can have a baby when the time is right for me,” said Arai, who is single.However, owing to the ethical implications, the technology is only available at the moment for female patients whose men suffer sterility, the clinic said.Soon after introducing the technology, the clinic said it received many inquiries from women with non-medical problems. Most were in their 30s and were either single or divorced.“Currently, we cannot accept requests from women who have no medical reasons owing to the ethical issues. However, I believe things will change in the near future,” said Osamu Kato, head of the clinic.About 200 ova from women whose husbands are sterile have already been stored at the Kato clinic in a metal container at a temperature of minus 196 degrees Celsius. The ova are being preserved in expectation of new treatment methods for sterility being developed.The technology developed at the clinic involves soaking the ovum in a newly developed protective agent. By placing the ovum and a small amount of this fluid in liquid nitrogen, freezing can be completed much faster than normal, so limiting any damage to the eggs after thawing.“If a woman is in good health, there are no particularly high risks in giving birth when she is in her 40s or 50s.” Hiroshi Motoyama, a doctor at Jikei University Hospital in Tokyo, said.Motoyama said the number of advanced-age Japanese births has risen. His hospital has delivered about eight babies since 1997 born to mothers in their 40s or 50s, who reached menopause or were close to it. All the women had gone to the U.S. for in vitro fertilization.A 56-year-old woman gave birth to her first child, a girl at Motoyama’s hospital last summer. The woman is believed to be the oldest first-time mother in Japan.Although the woman had reached menopause, she went to the U.S. with her husband and underwent in vitro fertilization using donated eggs. She reportedly said that having a baby would fulfill her as a woman after she had accomplished all she could in her career.Yuki Sumi, head of Infertility Information Centre in Tokyo, which is an agency to help the would-be fertility patients to find egg donors in the U.S., said, “We have been getting many enquiries in the last three years from women in their late 40s to early 50s.”“Once the technology of freezing eggs has been fully developed and the ethical problems are solved, more women in Japan will give births in 40s and 50s,” said Jikei University Hospital’s Motoyama.Some doctors in Japan, however, question the wisdom of older women giving birth, especially since in some cases the parents may die before their children have reached adulthood.
