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Oldest Mother Regrets Abortions
The woman known as the world's oldest mother says she regrets having had two
abortions when she was young and now says she regards abortion as murder.
Adriana Iliescu, a 66-year-old Romanian woman, gave birth to a baby girl earlier
this month after undergoing nine years of fertility treatment, according to BBC.
She told Britain's Sunday Telegraph that she became pregnant twice in her early
20s during a four-year marriage and had two abortions at that time.
"I got married when I was only 20 and still a student," she told the Telegraph.
"My husband was also still a student at the atomic physics university back then,
and the marriage didn't last long. We divorced four years later. In that time I
had two pregnancy terminations - it was the normal thing back then and the
accepted form of contraception. If there is anything I regret then it is those
terminations, not having a baby now.
"Religion was not a big part of many people's lives and I had never had any
religious education, I believed the party line that a fetus is only considered a
life when it is older than three months."
Mrs. Iliescu said she "discovered religion" after her marriage and is now
Romanian Orthodox. She believes that, after decades of hoping for a child, her
daughter's arrival had divine sanction, the newspaper reported.
"During this time I never gave up my faith in God and in the power of trying to realize one's dreams," she said.
She added that she regretted the abortions, which she said were then seen as an
accepted form of birth control in Romania. "In those days I would never have
thought of a termination as murder as I do now," she told the Sunday Telegraph.
Mrs. Iliescu, a retired university professor and author of children's books,
spoke of her immense joy when her baby was born five weeks early, after she
underwent nine years of fertility treatment. "It was the happiest [moment] in my
life. She grabbed my finger with her tiny hand and held it - it was a gift from
God," she told the newspaper.
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