66-year-old mom criticized after giving birth to twin boys

According to reports, Maria, a retired store employee, sold her house to be able to afford IVF treatment that would enable her to fall pregnant despite her years. She is said to have lied to doctors at a fertility clinic in California, telling them she was 55.

It was Maria’s belief that everyone should be able to choose when they want to start a family, instead of being pressured into it by society or the expectations of others.

Diagnosed with cancer

As per The Guardian newspaper, she said at the time: “Often circumstances put you between a rock and a hard place, and maybe things shouldn’t have been done in the way they were done, but that was the only way to achieve the thing I had always dreamed of.”

Naturally, not everyone agreed with her.

Chief among her critics were members of her own family, who labeled her selfish. Maria even said that she had hidden her pregnancy for a time, and that her relatives thought she was joking when she decided to tell them.

In 2006, Maria gave birth to a set of healthy twin boys, Christian and Pau, becoming the oldest mom in the world in the process.

Tragically, though, she would not get to see them grow up. Just six months after giving birth, the new mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

“They’re still babies, so I haven’t told them,” she said at the time. “They’re too young for these things.”