Australian YouTuber TJ Woolf is 50 years old and pregnant with her second child. And this isn’t the first time she’s had a baby at an advanced age. She had her first child — whom she calls “Star” online — in 2021 when she was 48 years old.
Woolf describes herself as a “single mother by choice.” She explains on her YouTube channel that she always thought she would meet a man to start a family with, but nothing ever worked out. When she was 46, she realized that the clock had run out on meeting someone and decided to try for a baby on her own through in vitro fertilization. At first, Woolf attempted to have a baby using her own eggs and donor sperm, but the process failed given the age of her eggs. She then decided to create a baby using both a donor egg and donor sperm. This means Star was created using the egg and sperm of a woman and a man who are strangers to her, to each other, and to Woolf. (RELATED from Ellie Gardey: Shane Dawson and Ryland Adams’ Use of Surrogacy Showcases the Practice’s Grotesqueness)
Woolf is ecstatic to have given birth to a child in her advanced age after her career as a lawyer and life coach. In one of her YouTube videos, Woolf sings, “Dreams can come true,” while she rocks baby Star.
TJ Woolf shows off her pregnancy at the age of 50 (MyBabyDream/YouTube)
Woolf is far from alone. More and more women over the age of 45 — after which it is incredibly difficult to naturally conceive — are turning to IVF to have children. The CDC announced last year that the number of women who gave birth after age 45 increased 12 percent from 2021 to 2022. Linda Kahn, assistant professor at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, explained to USA Today that this increase is almost entirely driven by the growth of IVF. “Naturally, it’s very rare without any kind of intervention to get pregnant after 45,” she explained. “That’s where you’re zeroing in on the effect of IVF.”
It is almost impossible for women to conceive naturally after age 45 because of the age of their eggs. For this reason, women who give birth after that age through IVF most commonly use donor eggs or eggs that they froze when they were younger. For example, Good Morning America covered the story of Judy Lederman, who gave birth to twins at the age of 53 (after she already had grandchildren from a previous marriage). In addition, Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth gave birth to her two children at age 46 and 50 through IVF; she has not specified whether those children were conceived with donor eggs.
Giving birth at this age is fraught with dangers. Take, for instance, the shocking title of an article published in 2013 in the American Journal of Perinatology: “IVF is safe over 50 if it is not fatal.” The authors concluded that article by stating: “[T]here must remain a question of what death rate would make it unethical for doctors to perform an elective request procedure.”
There are a number of complications linked to advanced maternal age, including “placental adherence with severe hemorrhage,” “severe hypertensive morbidities,” and death. There is also an increased risk for preeclampsia and gestational diabetes. In addition, older women who use IVF with egg donation are at greater risk for “pregnancy-induced hypertension, preeclampsia, preterm birth, low birth weight, twin pregnancy, and prolonged labor requiring cesarean section.”
In the case of TJ Woolf, she was diagnosed with gestational diabetes during both her first and second pregnancies.
Women who have publicly started families at an age beyond what would typically be naturally possible have been unapologetic about their decisions. Woolf started the “My Baby Dream Community” for women who are considering having a baby at an older age, by themselves, or with donor eggs; over 100 women have joined the group. Woolf insists on her great health and the ease of her pregnancy to those who follow her. “If I didn’t even look down and see this bump,” she told her audience, “I wouldn’t even know I was pregnant, honestly.” Meanwhile, Tammy Duckworth has used her experience with IVF to advocate for the procedure, especially following the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling that recognized embryos produced through IVF as children. Duckworth is also unapologetic about the embryos she created and later destroyed. (READ MORE: Follow Alabama’s Supreme Court. IVF Is Disgusting and Evil.)
On Tuesday, the Minnesota House of Representatives heard a bill that would officially legalize surrogacy, which operates via IVF. During the hearing, Rebecca Delahunt, the director of public policy at the Minnesota Family Council, spoke persuasively on the evil of purposefully cutting off children from their mother and/or father, as happens in IVF when donor eggs and/or sperm are used, such as in the case of TJ Woolf. “Children are already facing significant mental health struggles and identity craving,” said Delahunt. “What will happen when we create a sizable population of them who are cut off from their mother and/or father?”
“Children have a natural right to their biological mother and father,” Delahunt asserted. “We all understand that people crave to know where they’re from. It’s why adopted children face what is often called the primal wound. They sense the loss of being cut off from their identity.”
Delahunt explained that creating children to purposefully deprive them of their biological parents is different from adoption because, in adoption, a child is “not created with the intention of separating him or her from parents.” Surrogacy and IVF, on the other hand, she explained, create “a marketplace for adults to pay for potentially unrelated children.”
Indeed, when TJ Woolf created her two children by IVF, she purchased eggs, purchased sperm, and paid to put them together. She thus purchased her children for the sake of her own happiness, not caring that doing so deprives her children of their biological parents.