A Spanish mother who was the oldest woman ever to give birth has died, leaving behind her twin boys.
Maria del Carmen Bousada had her babies in December 2006 when she was 66 years old.
She was single and conceived them through in vitro fertilisation.
But the former shop assistant was diagnosed with cancer shortly after giving birth and died last Saturday.
She had admitted that she had lied about her age, claiming to be 55, so that she would be treated at the California fertility clinic where she had IVF.
Her death has kick-started the debate about older mothers once again.
Was she horribly selfish to have the babies in the first place? Many commentators think so.
Allison Pearson, writing in the Daily Mail, says: "Failing to confront the facts of her own mortality, she has left her children both horribly vulnerable and scarred for life."
I'll admit they are vulnerable. Scarred for life? We'll just have to wait and see.
In the Telegraph, Genevieve Fox writes: "Two and a half years later she is dead. Fizzled out like the Wicked Witch of the West." Harsh.
She says: "When [the twins] look at their mother's gravestone and see how old she was when she had them, they will ask themselves: how could you? How could you have been selfish enough to bring me into the world and then abandon me to it?"
Will they? They might I suppose. Most teenagers go through a phase of railing at their parents: "I wish I'd never been born..." But they might not. They might be grateful to be alive.
I'm kind of playing devil's advocate here.
I do think it is weird that women who are old enough to be my granny want to have babies.
And it probably is selfish to have children if you know the chances are you're not going to be around to bring them up.
But I think to vilify this woman and automatically assume that her children are going to be scarred for life is going a bit far. Lots of children lose their mothers early in life. Let's not write them off just yet.
What do you think? Do elderly mothers deserve all the abuse they get?
Source: AOL News