Try for twelve next time
Eh? Really? Really?
It was a midwinter miracle; eight babies born to a single mother and every one of them delivered alive. For a nation enduring its deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression, the tale was a welcome relief from bail-outs and bankruptcies. But this weekend, as the journalistic pack chases an altogether darker dimension to the story of Nadya Suleman, the feel-good factor has suddenly vanished.
What ‘miracle’? What feel-good factor? What welcome relief? Was everybody turning handsprings and throwing confetti off the roof last week just because some fool had decided to whelp eight children at once and thus put them and herself at great risk and use up who knows how many hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical care that could have been more usefully spent on something else? I know I wasn’t; was anyone?
The BBC World Service was, to be sure. I did hear their coverage and I did frown in puzzlement at their exuberant tone. What on earth are they so pleased about? I wondered. But I thought it was some stupid journalistic thing, not a universal thing. I don’t know anyone who thought it was cute or clever or a good idea or ‘heart-warming’ – but perhaps that’s because I know only cold secular urban coastal nerds? Were all the Real Folks out there in the Authentic parts of the world weeping tears of joy over the (shudder) octuplets?
Far from being a heart-warming tale of wonder, the more that becomes known about the Suleman family, the more it seems something very disturbing has occurred. Public reaction has quickly turned from joy to shock and anger.
This guy is out of his mind. A heart-warming tale of wonder! Because a woman tries to imitate a dog and have a whole litter of humans! What is heart-warming about that? It’s freakish, it’s unusual, it’s somewhat disgusting, but what’s heart-warming about it? Who felt any joy about it, and why would anyone feel any joy?
[I]f the American public was looking for hope and inspiration in the face of tough times, the Suleman octuplets will have provided little in the way of light relief.
Well duh, but I have a hard time believing that anyone apart from reporters ever thought any octuplets would provide any hope and inspiration. What a dopy idea.
I wondered whether you were going to address this!!
It’s really loopy, and was from the start. I remember thinking the same when I read it, and then when I read that the woman – if ‘whelping’ can be used? – already had several children, I wondered (as you did) why on earth a ‘fertility clinic’ was involved!
Of course, the ‘heart-warming’ aspect of the story comes from the ‘miracle of birth’ – didn’t you know? Obviously, you’re not around churches at Christmas time!
Nadya Suleman allegedly wants to plan a career as a television childcare expert.
She also reportedly hopes to earn as much as 2 million dollars by selling her story, amid claims that she desperately needs the money to care for her 14-strong family.
How is it that she was able to come under the remit of the fertility clinic? I thought these places were for childless women or such like?
The way it’s spinning out, she appears to be mentally ill. I should imagine there’s a fair prospect of the babies being taken into care. Heartwarming.
Yeah, the mother, apparently, keeps saying to the media that she is not well. She would know her more than anybody else.
“Try for twelve next time”
Yeah, a dozen children is what she was originally aiming for, according to the link, anyway. Seemingly, too the other bairns were alsofashioned the same way.
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090131/ap_on_re_us/octuplets
Leaving the poor woman, who sounds as if she is mentally ill, alone, it strikes me that the doctors who helped to make this happen really ought to be struck off. (providing they knew, or reasonably ought to have known, what was going on….)
Fertility treatment is supposed to be for couples struggling to conceive children, with the tendency for it to produce multiple births an unfortunate side-effect of the procedure, not an objective of it. Doctors ought to know this
I’m going to attempt to be a Devil’s advocate here.
Point 1: There seems to be some consensus it was unethical for fertility docs to help this woman have 14 children. What number would be permissible, then?
Point 2: I am betting that many or most of the people who write on this blog are pro-choice, and see abortion as a woman’s right to control the reproductive functions of her own body. How is this different?
-CM
CM, re: your point about abortion, having the right to control your reproductive decisions doesn’t mean that every decision you make is good. Abortion is frequently good, but having octuplets? Not so much. Abortion is generally good for the woman’s health. Much safer than pregnancy. It also has beneficial effects for her pre-existing children and other dependents, in that there are more resources to take care of them.
Having octuplets, on the other hand, is really good for no one. The only thing it does is satisfy this woman’s compulsion to have as many children as possible all at the same time (and why does she want that? It’s a mystery). I am all for women controlling their bodies. This does not mean I will respect the choice to put heroin in your body as much as the choice to put vegetables in it. Ditto for octuplets vs. abortion.
As for your first point about how many children would be ethical, that’s fairly easy: triplets. No more than that. No more than that occurs naturally, IIRC (not that natural occurrence is always an absolute arbiter, but in this case there’s a reason for it, and that reason is what the mother’s body can beart). And even triplets face serious health problems and so do their mothers. Once you get past triplets and onto quadruplets and so forth, the problems skyrocket.
Oh, and OB, why is it heartwarming? Because it’s about a WOMAN having BABIES, of course! What could be better for a woman than BABIES?
Well, y’know… It’s entertaining, I guess…
Sorta the way the fourteen clowns piling out of the same car bit is entertaining…
/Mandatory.
Jenavir –
I was asking about total number of little darlings, rather than the number allowable at one time. Would you limit folks to three kids?
-CM <---- not a member of the breeding class
There was an old woman who lived in a shoe
Had so many kids her uterus fell out
I thank you.
You lost me at “whelped”.
CM:
Answer to point 1: 0, since the woman already had children.
Answer to point 2: No difference from abortion rights is being asserted by those who object to this woman having octuplets, unless they also assert that her having octuplets should be illegal. (Just as affirming abortion rights is not the same as judging every instance of abortion to be unobjectionable. “Illegal” and “unethical are not at all the same concepts).
This is neither the time nor the place, but what the hell . . .
Octuplets? how delightful! Poor Moloch has been feeling deprived, lately . . .
Alternatively:
And the Magi arrived at the stable, and behold . . .
. . . eight tiny reindeer.
ca moyer: Nope, I wouldn’t limit anyone to any number of kids. I wouldn’t put any legal limit on conceiving octuplets, either. But I do think the practice shouldn’t be encouraged by physicians.
I do agree that arguing for abortion on grounds of reproductive freedom does require you to argue for legal freedom to have lots of children if you choose, though.
Its hard work deciding where you should draw a line on ‘too many’ children. Its easy though to say ‘If you have six, there is no way the state should subsidise fertility treatments.’
Two neighbours have huge family sizes – one 11, one 13. The family with 11 grow and sell vegies and pay their way as best they can. THe family with 13 are welfare abusers, I am told. When the state is supporting the family perhaps their is a good case for being able to have a say in how many kids they have – eg by withdrawing welfare if the family increases.
I think it was “heart-warming” for idiotic journalists because it gives them a “quirky” story to go on about for a while.
C.M one glaringly obvious difference is that the tax payer will be stuck with the bill for these eight children for the next sixteen years at least?
Don’t prospective adoptive parents have to fulfill some sort of criteria in order to adopt? And isn’t that to do with the rights of the child, or of the state which might have to support them? And if that is so (and I’m not sure that it is, it’s just what I’ve understood from adoptive parents I have known in Japan and in NZ, which may be different in the US), how is it different for fertility treatment, which may also result in a burden on the state, or a less than ideal situation for the (prospective) children?
Actually, I’ve never quite understood how adoptive parenthood can be so strictly controlled whereas anybody can be a ‘natural’ parent. What IS the difference, if you’re a child?
given that she is single and jobless, did the State have to pay for these treatments?
fertility clinics are on the rise these days because people still want to have kids even if they are already old:**
fertility clinics are on the rise these days because people still want to have kids even if they are already old:~~