'Granny birth' Italian gynecologist
Severino Antinori can serve his definitive six and a half year
prison term for stealing eggs from a Spanish nurse under house
arrest, a Milan surveillance court ruled Thursday.
Antinori, 75, who gained world headlines in 1994 for helping a
63-year-old woman become pregnant, was convicted by the supreme
Court of Cassation and was facing jail.
The supreme court cut his 2019 appeals trial sentence of seven
years and 10 months for stealing the eggs in 2016.
At the first instance trial in 2018 he got seven years and two
months for stealing eight eggs from the woman in April 2016.
The young nurse, who was being treated at a Milan clinic for an
ovarian cyst, told police she was bound, sedated, forced to
undergo removal of her eggs and deprived of her cell phone
throughout the procedure.
Antinori became famous for the world's first 'granny
births'.
In 1994 he assisted Italian woman Rossana Della Corte, aged 63,
in becoming pregnant.
She became one of the oldest women in history to give birth.
In May 2006 it was announced that 62-year-old East Sussex child
psychiatrist, Patricia Rashbrook, was seven months pregnant
after being treated by Antinori, who said that 62 or 63 was the
upper limit for IVF in healthy women.
He commented that he would only consider couples with at least
20 years' life expectancy left for fertility treatment.
Josephine Quintavalle, from Comment on Reproductive Ethics
(CORE), accused Rashbrook of selfishness and said it would be
extremely difficult for a child to have a mother who is as old
as a grandmother.
In May 2009, after it was announced a 66-year-old woman was
pregnant, Antinori criticised her decision saying that he felt
she was too old and may not live long enough to raise her child.
Antinori has also been disbarred for five years.
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