A 67-year-old woman is pregnant with twins and refuses to abort the babies despite doctors advice to do so.
“Children are the mothers life, but also my spiritual sustenance,” said the Beijing woman, who goes by the pseudonym Zhang Heng, Newsweek reported Wednesday.
After losing her only son to a car accident, Heng and her husband sought to adopt but were rejected because of their advanced ages. Hengs 34-year-old son was born during Chinas one-child rule mandating that parents could have no more than one baby in an attempt to ensure that the countrys huge population did not hold back its economic development, National Public Radio reported.
China implemented a two-child policy in 2016 in order to encourage a lagging birth rate.
Heng went to a hospital in Taiwan for in vitro fertilization following the adoption agencys rejection and became pregnant with twins in June, less than a month after the procedure. Heng has since been diagnosed with hypertension, which can be fatal for pregnant women. (RELATED: Doctors Find 15-Year-Old Aborted Baby in Woman)
Doctors at Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing advised Heng to abort following the diagnosis, but she refused.
The number of woman who are older than 50 and giving birth has continued to rise in the U.S. since 1997, according to Newsweek. Nearly 800 women older than 50 gave birth to babies in 2016 in the U.S. A 65-year-old German teacher also gave birth to quadruplets in 2015.
Indias 72-year-old Daljinder Kaur gave birth in 2015 after two years of IVF treatment. She is believed to be the oldest woman to ever give birth.
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