The news that María del Carmen Bousada de Lara, a Spanish woman who gave birth to twins shortly before her 67th birthday, has died of cancer seems to have provoked a wave of moral outrage.

Her actions have been described as selfish, unnatural and wrong, her children innocent victims in her pernicious plan for reproductive self-gratification.

This is a curiously patrician point of view. Every day thousands of people give birth to babies who have been conceived casually or in haste or for all kinds of selfish reasons. Children who are unwanted, unloved, uncared for, whose welfare is barely given a moment’s thought. And those are the lucky ones.

There are other, far worse people in the world who should not be allowed to keep a dog, let alone be responsible for a tiny human life.

People who break children’s backs, or grind cigarette butts into their thighs, or perpetrate obscene acts against them. And yet no one says such people must be barred from reproducing — even when, manifestly, there would be a strong moral case against them.

This is because deciding who should be able to have children is a dangerous activity. If you argue that a pregnant 66-year-old — who lied about her age to get permission — is an abomination because she may not live to see her child’s 18th birthday, where do you stop?

What about women who partake in dangerous sports? Or women who smoke? Or join the Army, police or any other line of work that might put you in harm’s way?

No one thinks more carefully about having a child than the person who, through misfortune, or trauma or simply because they happen to appreciate the work of Judy Garland, cannot do so by natural means.

There are many homosexual men who are far better suited to fatherhood than their heterosexual counterparts, and yet society will barely contemplate the idea of a child in a gay household.

These people are not unnatural, just different. In most cases, the basic human desire to love and care for the next generation remains the same. Yes, it is a terrible shame that two children have lost their mother; but that does not mean they should never have been born.

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