Birth of IVF Octuplets Raises Ethical Questions: But Why?
The news wires are buzzing about Nadya Suleman, the woman who had eight babies through IVF. Questions are being raised about the ethics of the case, both because of her circumstances--she already has six children--and the number of children born. From the story:
But when you think about it: How can there even be a question of laws and ramifications in this day and age? The door to realistic norms and binding ethical constraints has not just been unlocked over the last few decades, it has been torn off the hinges. In today's world, doctors are becoming less professionals and more order taking technicians. Want an abortion? Take a number. Want assisted suicide? Take a number. Want to invest $500,000 into your face with cosmetic surgery? Take a number. You want your children genetically tested before deciding whether they are worth having? Take a number. Get pregnant with three IVF embryos and only want one, take a number to "selectively reduce" the two you don't want so you can raise an only child. A single woman, without a job, who already has six kids and wants eight more? Take a number.
A lot of people will be angry about this. Her mother even defended the woman as not being "evil." But I don't see how she or her doctors can be condemned when the watchword of the era is terminal nonjudgmentalism with the only gauge of morality being "choice."
Fertility experts have raised concerns about the number of embryos implanted and whether the procedure was within medical guidelines. "I cannot see circumstances where any reasonable physician would transfer [so many] embryos into a woman under the age of 35 under any circumstance," said Arthur Wisot, a fertility doctor in Redondo Beach and the author of "Conceptions and Misconceptions."The problem we face as a society can be seen clearly in the above comments.
Doctors probably could not deny treatment to a woman simply because she already has children, he said. However, he added, they should have taken steps to make sure she did not have so many babies at once. "I certainly think you can talk to her about it if you feel like she's making a decision that's not in her best interest or the interest of her children," Wisot said. "You can send her for psychological evaluation, but I honestly don't know if you can say, 'No, I won't take care of you because you have too many children.' "
Dr. Geeta Swamy, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University, told The Times this week that the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists advise doctors "to curb these higher-order multiple gestations," she said. "But it really is still up to the individual physician. There aren't any laws or legal ramifications to it."
But when you think about it: How can there even be a question of laws and ramifications in this day and age? The door to realistic norms and binding ethical constraints has not just been unlocked over the last few decades, it has been torn off the hinges. In today's world, doctors are becoming less professionals and more order taking technicians. Want an abortion? Take a number. Want assisted suicide? Take a number. Want to invest $500,000 into your face with cosmetic surgery? Take a number. You want your children genetically tested before deciding whether they are worth having? Take a number. Get pregnant with three IVF embryos and only want one, take a number to "selectively reduce" the two you don't want so you can raise an only child. A single woman, without a job, who already has six kids and wants eight more? Take a number.
A lot of people will be angry about this. Her mother even defended the woman as not being "evil." But I don't see how she or her doctors can be condemned when the watchword of the era is terminal nonjudgmentalism with the only gauge of morality being "choice."
Labels: IVF. Octuplets. Terminal Nonjudgmentalism. Nadya Sulman.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:17 AM
44 Comments
44 Comments:
This is one of those strange new areas that we are heading into where not only evil is called good, but now good is called evil. Not only is it OK to undergo IVF, but it is wrong to have too many children at once, and it will most likely become socially acceptable for a doctor to say that someone has too many children period, as you alluded to.
I suppose I shouldn't really be surprised by all of this, but I always am.
I am a bit annoyed by all the controversy-if she had had a selective abortion because of the multiple pregnancies, etc, than I could see the anger...but I think that this isn't a big deal in terms of ethical problems. Yes, that's a lot of children, but I hope no one is arguing that that woman should have been forced to undergoe reduction. I can see restrictions placed on how many embryos are allowed to be implanted, but other than that, I really don't think it's anyone's business.
SAFEpres: Had she aborted six or so of the children, there wouldn't be the least controversy.
I remember speaking at a bioethics conference in Canada several years ago and the speaker before me was complaining that the state did not pay for "selective reduction." It was the first time I had heard the term. That was when I found out that IFV doctors often implant way more embryos than a woman wants to bear to make sure at least one or two take, and then abort a few if too many commence gestation. It made my head spin.
Speaking as a mother of eight, and, like Ms. Suleman, also hoping for more, I am forced to question the sanity of any woman, who has already carried many children to full term, yet would take the route she did. Why?!??? I truly don't understand it. I can't even start to think about the ethics of it because I'm just so gobsmacked at the prospect of anyone in the same position as myself putting herself in a position to have eight babies at once. This isn't like collecting Beanie Babies or something...
Margaret: I understand. But my point is that we have created a society where we can't even question these kind of things any more.
Obviously, they should not have even attempted implantation of more than two children at a time. Selective reduction is completely wrong. Twins can easily and safely be carried to term, so attempting implantation of two children at a time would cause no questions at all, if we set aside the question of whether IVF is ethical to begin with (which is a separate question).
This is one place where I actually agree with Wesley. There is a common conception that MDs are really the equivalent of car mechanics. I hope the profession can reassert itself AS a profession with responsibilities.
Where do you draw the line between autonomy on the part of the pt and paternalism on the part of the MD, Wesley?
Matteson: That's become a huge order. This is off the top of my head and so would be subject to amendment and further elaboration:
I would start by with establishing an ethical norm that discourages the intentional taking of human life in medicine. I think we could and should pass laws that try to limit fertility treatments to what is natural for the human species. Italy, for example, only permits 3 IVF embryos to be created at a time and requires all that are made to be implanted.
Imagine if we had done that all along. There wouldn't be 400,000 in the deep freeze and looked upon by scientists as a natural resource.
I think the "do no harm" ethic needs to be restored, with the term "harm" properly defined rather than becoming so elastic as to be meaningless and/or to include harmful things as if they weren't harmful.
What do you think?
Of course the ethical issue also involves the propriety of a single mother with 6 other children undergoing in vitro fertilization and having what amounts to a litter.
Who's going to take care of all those kids? Is she going to have them suckle at the public teat? It's been estimated that it costs an average of $9,000 per year th raise ONE child. Do the math!
I find it concerning that the doctor who was quoted said "I really don't know if we can say 'You have too many children'; I can't take care of you" -- depending on what "take care of" means. I.v.f. doesn't seem to be exactly taking care of someone in the first place; I'm not sure to what he was referring, but a doctor's job is to take care of whoever is before him. It's not a question of whether she has "too many" children, and that's not the doctor's job to determine unless they are a risk to her health.
What I don't understand is why woman so fertile that she already has six children would need fertility treatment in the first place, and why she wanted it. Fertility treatment is for women who can't get pregnant; obviously she can; if she just wasn't getting pregnant with the desired next child as quickly as she wished or had in the past, a responsible physician would tell her maybe your body needs to take a break, remember that you are a few years older now, nature has given you what you were designed to have, and if there is possible reason for concern about her health if she becomes pregnant again, let alone with multiples, that physician should refuse to indulge her; likewise if it does not appear that it will be possible for those children to be provided for properly in a material sense. This is not someone who has gone through the anguish of being barren for years.
When I first heard of this it rang to me of a possible experiment, or else of the woman having some agenda; otherwise she must have an advanced case of baby madness. If it is no threat to her, or their, health, there is no nefarious agenda, and the children are able to be provided for by the parents, and she wants eight more children, as long as i.v.f. exists and is safe (which I don't think it should, or is, in the first place), I don't think she should be denied them. But this is forcing eight infants who had to share the resources of one uterus and be born too small, which is a disadvantage, we can't be sure that it's not a threat to her health, even in the future, and they don't even have a stable situation, with a father legally committed to be present for them, or financially stable, to be born into. Life should never be denied, but it shouldn't be forced into existence in less than adequate conditions, and in the first place i.v.f. shouldn't be done at all in my view, which is the real problem here.
If she doesn't have an agenda, I admire her courage and integrity in insisting that all the eight embryoes that were created (but at her request, or was it just presented to her that they had "taken," and if the latter perhaps because she is so fertile that eggs harvested from her were more prolific?) be given a chance to live; she does seem to have plenty of maternal energy, both physical and emotional, and the doctors did right to honor her wish as long as it was safe for her to pursue her chosen course. But why on EARTH was she seeking fertility treatment in the first place, and why did a doctor not sit her down and say, "My dear, you are in hormonal overdrive and your body can't keep up with your wishes right now; nature does these things sometimes; the children you already have are going to need you; don't overtax yourself; trust nature." As a matter of fact, there used to be "wise-women" who understood herbs and their uses and took care of other women, and there probably is an herbal remedy to balance out what she wanted v. what her body was capable of doing, assuming she was having trouble conceiving number seven just when she wanted to. But modern science doesn't understand and incorporate such methods. If she wanted a multiple birth from one pregnancy to satisfy baby mania, though, no one should have cooperated then either, because i.v.f. is in my view wrong in the first place, and she wasn't even infertile. Once things get started, life takes precedence, but life shouldn't get started this way, no matter whose idea it is and who wants what. I suspect that something more than has been become publicly known is going on here. If not, she's not wrong to want to have as many children as possible, unless the reasons are other than natural maternal instinct; there just shouldn't be i.v.f. I also believe that everyone has their own individual reproductive capacity, and should accept it, and that we shouldn't mess with it. I don't understand why people are castigating her for wanting all those kids; unless there's another agenda here, her maternal instinct is admirable. But the means by which this happened should not exist.
Wesley: I think reinstating "Do No Harm" is absolutely necessary, and is enough, not even requiring further definition.
I saw on one of the entertainment shows that the woman in question was pretty keen on having more than a dozen children.
She was already 33 years old and "only" had 6. I suppose she feared her declining fertility.
So much for "reproductive freedom." But then again, they never meant it anyway. Sounds like reproductive freedom is a one way street. It's only for preventing birth not giving birth. Very soon the taxpayer will be funding the UN population fund when Obama takes off the Bush funding ban and we'll be using it to force women to abort. It will be abortion advocates who talk about reproductive freedom pushing funding UNFPA too. O well. Orwell, get down here. We need you to sort this out.
I think they were all born via IVF, which may mean she didn't have fertility issues at all but was just in a hurry. (I don't know, obvioualy.)In any event, who are we to judge? CHOICE!
Does anyone know who paid for her fertility treatment in the first place?
And who did the first stage of it? (I think I heard on the news that when she got to the doctors who cared for her during the pregnancy and delivered them, the implantation had been done already.)
This whole new "norm" of the kid first and then the wedding, or maybe never the wedding, is just plain disorganized, and disorganized is not good.
Hey, props to her for refusing, at least, to dump any of her unborn children down the ol' garbage disposal. Whatever you may think of her, her sense of morals is at least superior than that of those who pick their favorite two embryos and have the rest killed...
Ianthe, I am against abortion. But I think it's immoral to set about having children that you know in advance you can't provide for. This isn't a case of birth control failure, this is a case of a woman going out of her way to get pregnant. Unless she wins the lottery, no way can she support 8 babies plus 6 small children without the taxpayers' help, and the taxpayers were never consulted as to whether they wanted to help.
Plus, I am the mother of one child and I can tell you that parenting is a lot of work. I suppose that Margaret who commented here spread hers out a bit and did not have them all at once. Babies have to be cared for and they can do nothing for themselves. Toddlers are unrelenting in their quest for self-destruction, requiring eternal vigilance on the part of their caregivers if they're to reach age 4 alive. Without major, major help, I can't see anything other than actual criminal negligence as a matter of course because NO WAY can a person take care of all those babies alone. And early reports had her saying she was going to breastfeed them. Breastfeed EIGHT babies. Delusional.
"This whole new "norm" of the kid first and then the wedding, or maybe never the wedding, is just plain disorganized, and disorganized is not good."
Agree. I read articles about So-and-so and her fiance, and their three children ... what?
That's what I mean. It seems wrongheaded to implant so many embryoes and to undergoe such treatments with six children. On the other hand, I am relieved that she didn't undergoe selective reduction. I would much rather pay taxes to support those children than pay taxes to pay for her abortion procedure.
I agree that our culture seems to think that abortion in such a case is absolutely fine. That's what bothers me. Our society seems ready to see multiple births as controversial but not multiple abortions. That's why the current controversy bothers me. I am worried that such concerns could be interpreted as support for forcing
women in such situations to undergo selective abortion, and we don't want to go there.
According to a report I just heard, the woman did not want her other embryos destroyed. I guess there are other ways she could have prevented this, such as by donating some of them, etc, but I do understand her concern.
Laura: I'm not in favor of abortion, either. I said that if it's possible to provide for them, and for them all, and her as well, etc., she has the right to have as many as she wants; I didn't say it's possible for her to fulfill those requirements. I also don't think it's right to destroy an embryo. I just don't think that embryos should be created via i.v.f. in the first place.
I agree about children being an immense amount of work. Some are more desireous of and suited for the job than others. I've never had baby hunger and, on balance, prefer not to be a mom, and I see women pushing a baby carriage with toddlers and children in tow plus one or more dogs on leash in hand and cannot imagine how they do it all; even one kid constitutes a monumental task.
I just heard on the radio that this woman had these eight kids via i.v.f. and that her mother says that she has always been obsessed with having a lot of children and that she had told her that she did not approve of her doing what she just did and urged her not to. I don't know how she's going to handle them either. Maybe she's sufficiently delusional to believe that she is a primitive fertility statue and has as many arms as a Hindu goddess. It's not fair to her family or to the children, and she does seem to have needed a visit from the wise-woman herb lady for her own sake as well. If they all, even including the octuplets, have the same father, he seems some sandwiches short of a picnic as well.
Women having children without being married, having the baby first and then marrying the father, etc. had become a social norm in Scandanavia by the early 1990s, and not long after that it became the fashion here. I remember my father commenting on women here starting to get the idea about having children all on their own, and shaking his head over it, in 1982. I just don't understand it. But what with Murphy Brown, Hollywood types, etc. doing it, it's become "the thing to do." Just as a lot of other things that don't make sense have.
bmmg and SAFEpres: I agree.
Don: Didn't Obama do that on his first day?
Laura: Your apt description of toddlers applies to certain adults as well, from what I've seen and had to deal with. At least with a kid there's a good chance that they'll grow out of it.
Laura: I mistyped above; I meant if it's possible to provide for them all adequately and for them all, and for her too, to be healthy. Some women seem to be energized in a miraculous way by having a lot of children and to be capable of doing the superhuman, but things don't seem to be off to a good start in that direction in this situation, to say the least. I wouldn't call it criminal, but it's something. If it's criminal, then everyone involved in the creation of these children is involved, and her parents might be considered accessories, and inference might be drawn that legitimizes even further the destruction of an embryo, and that it's better not to live than to live, etc. If the family somehow can provide for them all, and relatives and friends pitch in, and she doesn't crack up completely from being like the woman who lived with her brood in a shoe, fine, but otherwise it's going to end up with shrinks and social workers and child protective agents and foster homes and judges and the parents having strokes and heart attacks etc.
I still want to know who paid for the i.v.f. in the first place. Then there's the bill for the rest of the process. Then there's the father's story, and whether there's just one father. I think many here might agree, though, that the freedom for this to have happened is better than the Chinese system of forced abortion.
At this point, the biggest issue *I* have is that the babies aren't here on this Earth because a woman who had resources to spare thought about what she could give to them. They're here because a desperate woman who wants this dream of a big family thought about what *they* could give to *her.*
This is total use-and-abuse. No, I'm not claiming she's physically abusing the kids; far from it. She seems to be a very loving person. But she's abusing their right to exist because she wants to use them to fill in some kind of void.
Speaking as someone who knows about the log in her own eye, believe me, I know what it's like to want someone else in your life for the sake of having this great dream about a fulfilled life, but honestly, the real reason I never ran off to get married with the first guy I came across was in knowing my own fault - that I didn't want a marriage to find a partner to share a life with, but to find someone to take care of me and give to me. That's not a fair relationship. Likewise, the relationship she has with her kids is, "You make me fulfilled." She might be willing to do the diaper duty and so forth, but it's not because she rightly believes that she is responsible for them, or not what I've seen. It's because the "negatives" like diaper duty are "part of the package of motherhood."
Think of all the "rewards" she gets from this - media attention, temporary celebrity, and of course, the babies' dependence on her which is taken as unconditional love. Plus, if things get hard and she can gripe (speaking as someone who shares this sin, I'm ashamed to admit), then she can garner sympathy and pity, and make herself a martyr.
And now, I have nothing against people wanting to have babies. Particularly in cases where you love someone so much you want to share everything with him, having children together is a wonderful celebration of that love. And some people feel empty without having the opportunity to serve the most helpless of us, which is why they volunteer as either Big Brothers/Big Sisters or they work in nursing homes, just as one example. I can see people like that wanting to have children to offer their love to unconditionally.
And yet, I can't see that with this woman who had six already and wanted more just so she'd have at least a dozen before she got too old. A person like that, I have to ask this of: "What's wrong with adopting a child?"
Seriously, if you really want to make an effort to find someone you can give your love to unconditionally, there are plenty of kids (particularly older kids) out there who are without homes who need good families. If you're desperate to have a large family, that's a good rout to go to avoid health problems, ensure you don't take on too much at once, and help someone who desperately needs it.
Fertility treatments feel like a sense of entitlement. I'm entitled to have a baby grown inside me before I feel I can give it love.
What about the woman who made public the fact that she adores her younger daughter but doesn't love her older daughter, for example? Here you have a woman who feels she's entitled to have a child she loves (the younger one) but can't make herself love or give affection to the older one, and yet, for the older girl's eleven years (yep, that's right, the girl is 11 years old), the mother never gave her up!
You've got a mom here who never bonded to the older girl, always feels like she's lying if she says, "I love you," to the child, and pushes her away when the little girl wants affection. She calls her younger daughter, "The love of my life."
But this woman's sense of entitlement is so strong she never gave the older girl up, depsite never feeling any love for her. The kid's going to grow up knowing she's second rate compared to the baby sister (doubly so now that the woman has posted this all over the internet), and is going to have the emotional problems inherent in. The mom, when her daughter was still a baby, knew she didn't love the child. She could have gone through the proper channels and helped the girl get into a loving home.
Unfortunately, most people who adopt won't adopt a kid older than five years old. Now that the little girl's 11, it's very hard to find her a home. When she was a baby, it might have been easier, especially in a private adoption, where the mom could decide who got the baby and could keep tabs on the little girl's progress.
Now, I'm not saying that the mother of these octuplets is going to pick a favorite over all the others and disdane one or more of her kids, either the older six or these babies. But I'm saying that it's very similar in appearace to me - both women seem to feel that they're entitled to have these kids under any circumstances, under any conditions, and nevermind what's best for the babies. It's all about *the mothers,* and the kids' welfare is an afterthought.
I'm a bit distraught over both situations. Children have a VERY hard time becoming strong and healthy adults if they have these kinds of setbacks, particularly if the parents care more about their own concerns than they do about the kids. I'm not saying it's impossible. Some children have the fortitude to raise themselves up, no matter the circumstances.
But it's going to be a LOT harder for these kids.
Suzanne: It makes sense that that may have been her reason. Maybe she didn't want to go through many more labors, too, or maybe that wasn't a factor.
T.E.:I think you just brought up a lot of interesting points. Growing up, I knew six kids of another family, including twins; the mother had wanted a girl and kept having kids until the youngest, a girl, was born; she also favored one of the twins and always said that he was wonderful and that she had never liked the other; that one grew up to have a gambling habit and hanged himself to death in his 30s. Maternal selfishness and narcissism, wanting to have a baby so that one will have someone to love one, someone that one owns, etc., are huge and extremely destructive problems; I don't even like the term "have" a baby; "gives" a baby is better. But life is not without a price one way or another and sometimes that's the price of life for the offspring, the cost of the admission ticket into life, which is a desireable destination in itself.
That may be why this woman wanted a lot of kids; I'm not sure she wanted media attention; we don't know. I think that there is a spectrum of manifestations in every area of life, and that some women have more maternal instinct than others; without maternal instinct, there would be no human race. She may just be at the end of the spectrum that wants to reproduce and reproduce. Lots of people say they would like a dozen or more children; not everyone does; the instinct that makes many say that but not do it happens to manifest in reality in her. It's her hormonal setup, and may be the cause of emotional instability, or may not; she may have both things going on a the same time; the body, emotions, and mind interact in complex ways. There are many women, like me, who never took to dolls and preferred playing soldier, and would approach motherhood as a job to be done well but prefer, given a choice, not to undertake it and are completely stymied by why anyone would do that on purpose and what all the fuss about babies is, didn't like childish things as a child and certainly don't want to have to be involved with them now, and then there are at the other end of the spectrum women like this, and a good thing there are the "mommy" types to make up for those of us who prefer to live on our own selfish terms and to contribute to the world in other ways. Many women have children they didn't want at all, and those kids are victims of insufficient maternal love just as the kind you described is, but isn't life valuable enough so that however one gets into it vis a vis the mother's intention, it's worth it? Some women are traditionally masculine in approach, some men are more nurturing than many women are, and meanwhile kids have to get born, and women who want to have a lot of children, obsessed with the notion or not, perform a valuable role in keeping the human race going; the same maternal instinct, even when it appears obsessive, that made them want to give birth to many children often, even usually, has a way of making them turn out to be great mothers, even against all odds. Nature has a way of taking care of things, and variety is one of the ways in which nature does that. She's just a manifestation of one type within that variety, and whether a head problem or extreme fertility or hormonal overdrive is responsible, she has, in fact, just accomplished something pretty extraordinary. Considering the fuss people make over babies, and the way motherhood is respected and revered, I'm surprised that from what I've heard in the media, people aren't congratulating her on her achievement and offering to help, but rather are saying what's wrong with this woman, etc. True, her circumstances are concerning. But when triplets, quads, quints, sextuplets, even septuplets are born, granted, usually (but not always) to a married couple, even when they already have other children, everyone jumps up and down and makes a fuss and congratulates them. Likewise families with huge numbers of children get "isn't that something!" attention. Let it be a woman alone, and she gets criticized, especially when her circumstances are unconventional. I STILL want to know who paid for the fertility treatment, and whether the eight embryos were intentional.
Wesley: Italy is the most advanced in terms of fertility medicine in the world, and it's a concern there because of the infertility and low birth rate there. At the same time between being the home of the Roman Catholic church, the value the culture places on life, the sunshine which encourages the latter, etc., naturally their both their medicine and their ethics, fertility and otherwise, are better than ours.
Before things got crazy, a woman who had a whole bunch of children, even if she was alone and they were too much to handle and she couldn't support them, was ADMIRED. There was a reverence for life, and for motherhood. If she was married and she and her husband were struggling to raise and support them, people didn't say hey what business did you have having all those kids; if she was a widow, she wouldn't be struggling if her husband had been solvent enough to have provided for his family in that eventuality; people would go out of their way to try to help her, and her children. It was considered a good thing to be alive, and for people to exist. Now,in this nihilistic time, comes this woman, and she's "wrong." What's really wrong here is i.v.f.
Or do we want to be on the utilitarian, "cost," how dare anyone have too many children and thereby offend the environment, etc. bandwagon. I haven't heard anything about her actually being on the public dole or planning to be; her father is going overseas to try to make more money to provide for them; her fiance or whatever his relationship to her is may be away for the purpose of doing likewise. The kids may or may not have to grow up on peanut butter sandwiches, and aren't apt to be destined for the preschool waiting list/Dalton/Ivy League track, but because they are more apt to be less advantaged, and aren't on a track to "quality of life" that would be acceptable to yuppies, do they have less of a right to exist? Wouldn't human exceptionalism say the opposite? We've got Obama sending tax money overseas to promote abortion as birth control and we're concerned about welfare having to help support this remarkable bunch? Unless she's on a nefarious mission to breed cover terrorists infiltrating the country from within who will come to maturity two decades hence, or this was some sort of plan to get more welfare money, if anyone is entitled to get help from tax money, she stands in line in front of a lot of others. She's just created eight more humans, all apparently healthy. Shouldn't human exceptionalism be glad about that?
Even when parents who can't afford them have multiple births people don't castigate them. But this one did make a choice, to create life, and the whole country is criticizing her. Better she should have been a yuppie with a yuppie job and delayed motherhood, needed fertility treatment, been a narcissistic parent to a kid she stuck with a nanny, or that there are eight more human beings on the planet now and somebody just did something pretty extraordinary, for whatever reason?
It's the ethical issue of a doctor implanting a woman who already has six children. This has nothing to do with "choice," Wesley. The children are bound to have health problems because of low birth weight. This woman is like somebody who hoards cats or garbage.
This has nothing to do with abortion, no matter how much you want it to be.
Lanthe, Obama lifted the Mexico City Policy in the first week-after of course the pro-lifers went home from their March. That policy forbids taxpayer funds to group who advocate for or provide abortions overseas. I don't think he's lifted the Bush UNFPA funding ban yet though he said he would last week. The UNFPA funds the brutal China One Child Policy-which I forgot to mention in the previous comment. The One Child Policy uses forced abortion. Colin Powell (no pro-lifer) and his state department determined this was actually happening and Bush withheld funds to UNFPA in accord with the Kemp Kasten act which says no funding to groups involved in coercive abortions.
My comments were to mock the abortion feminists. For all their babble about reproductive freedom, it's a hoot to me to hear them advocate against large families or telling women they have no right to bring their little embryonic children into the world. The same groups who preach reproductive freedom are advocating for lifting the ban while the Chinese sisterhood is being coerced into abortion and while female fetuses are targeted for abortion. I think over 70 percent of Chinese women want to have two or more children. Evidently they don't share the sisterhood's belief that men and kids are obstacles to success and fulfillment any more than Sarah Palin does. The goals of the abortion sisterhood also include population control. So Chinese women's reproductive rights are subjected to that "greater goal" of theirs.
I agree that we need to regulate IVF. I don't oppose the kids of IVF. But IVF is out of control and leads to eugenics and the notion that we deserve a certain type of child as the less desireable human embryos are weeded out for more prefered ones. I don't know if I would have made the cut if I had to compete with my sibblings in the petri dish. I don't have the looks of Brad Pitt, the intelligence of Einstein or the athletic giftedness of Tiger Woods, though I shot 79 yesterday from the tips after two months away from the links and no warm up swings:) Nor do I have the entreprenurial gifts of Bill Gates. Now that we have established that people deserve a certain kind of child, I don't see how we oppose those who want to clone to reproduce children or how we tell the transhumanists no.
Anyway, Obama lifted the Mexico City Policy, but not the UNFPA funding ban as far as I know.
Don: Thanks for setting out more clearly than I understood it up to then what Obama did and said he's going to do. As far as I'm concerned, from what I've seen thus far, if it's he doing it, it's concerning. I don't know about golf scores (but it sounds as if you did good) but from my perspective, Obama seems to be batting 1000 in the wrong direction on everything. Which is what I expected. As for i.v.f., I don't think it should be regulated; I think it just plain shouldn't exist. I don't know what this success and fulfillment malarkey is or even means; it's just nice to be able to be alive and experience life in whatever form it takes. But that's just me, apparently. I know a couple from China who gave up careers, social positions, etc. to come here because they wanted to have more than one child; they have two now.
Susan: "This has nothing to do with abortion, no matter how much you want it to be."
Of course it does. If those eight children were not implanted, what would have been done with them? The answer makes the connection rather clear.
Lanthe, I think we are on the same page about the success and fulfillment "malarkey." I don't get it either. My mother sure never thought we kids were obstacles, even when she had to raise us herself after her divorce. As you also note, Obama is going 100 percent in the wrong direction and it's going to get worse. The Hyde amendment banning federal funding of abortion except for rape, incest and the life of the mother is next. Planned Parenthood cites studies that this one amendment leads 18-35 percent of women who would other wise abort to continue the child's life-as if that's a bad thing. NARAL says it may be 50 percent.
Your comment about being alive and experiencing life in whatever form it takes hits home for more deeply today. I was with my dad last night and today in the hospital. He's probably going to be okay, though his incoherence today reminds me that every day is a precious gift and not to be wasted.
Don: The trouble with these liberals and planned parenthood and feminist and etc. liberal types is that they have no inner core and no sense and have latched onto these shibboleths for a sense of identity and self-validation. Sooner or later with enough of them running around loose in society and their "politically correct" views becoming mainstream we were going to end up with a fascist government and a dictatorship, and that's where we're headed now. There are a number of categories of people I would like not to allow into my house on principle but that would include people in those categories who I care about and who are my friends. Thus I settled on one: Anyone who voted for Obamam or at least anyone who told me they were going to, or did. Sorts things out neatly. I'd like to see things turn out well with him but I don't see it happening and I agree it's only going to get worse; look how it started.
I hope your father is feeling better and is out of the hospital right away. If God forbid he has a "living will" I hope he's at least at times coherent enough to revoke it, verbally, in writing, completely. It's dangerous enough for an older person in hospital even without a living will, and keep an eye on them; they have a way of messing up until the person ends up on a vent. He'd BETTER be ok. He's lucky you are there for him. Sometimes a hospital can't be trusted any further/farther than one could throw a piano. My thoughts and prayers are with you and him.
Ianthe:
I'm reluctant to have kids right now myself, since I know I'm not mature enough to handle them, and my best friend grew up in an abusive household. She won't have children because she fears that she'd become an abuser, too, and I know her personality. She's had a hard time because to avoid being abusive she's not going to get married or have a boyfriend, for the sake of protecting others. Believe me, loving her as if she were my own sister, I can't say for one *second* that I think you're selfish. Perhaps you're right and this woman with the eight babies just born really is hyper-momma.
But something about this doesn't sit right with me.
A while back there was a case of a woman who had six babies at once. What happened was that she got six embryos implanted and all of them took, instead of most of them dying and only one taking. She and her husband prayed on the issue and decided they'd made their bed and were going to sleep in it. So instead of selectively aborting, they had all six babies.
The intent in that case was to make up for something they realized too late might not be a great idea. In that case, while I'm sorry they chose to go the IVF route, which I don't agree with, I'm glad that they decided to do the right thing and give all their kids a chance at life.
But reading this woman's story, I can't bridge the two. Soemthing about this doesn't sit right with me. This doesn't feel like a case of, "I realized too late that having eight babies implanted was a bad move, but I'm going through with it because it's my *responsibility.*"
I think that's it. I think that what I'm missing here is the feeling that the woman in this case doesn't feel *responsible* or doesn't seem to be doing this out of a sense of responsibility.
Responsibility means different things depending on what people are like inside. It may be that not having kids is the *responsible* thing for you to do, Ianthe, just as my best friend feels that it is for her. At any rate, you don't act like you do things out of a sense of entitlement. And that's what's bothering me.
Love is putting the needs of others first, not because you're "supposed" to, but because giving happiness to the loved one is a great joy to the giver. Our society seems to have lost that sense of responsibility to the Other.
Ianthe:
One other thing - I don't compare the woman with these octuplets to the other with the sextuplets because one is married and the other isn't. I just wanted to mention that because of what you said about how society seems to be condemning her for the octuplets because she's single.
On the contrary, plenty of women - AND MEN! - who are single make great parents, but haven't found a spouse willing or capable of helping them yet. I'm all for single adoption, something that I'm at odds with some of my fellow Catholics about (although not most; a Catholic adoption agency in my Dioceses is pro-single adoption). Just as one example.
It isn't the situation itself, it's something about how the woman presents herself, and the way she behaves, that makes me think she likes the attention and she is more interested in what the kids can do for her than vice versa.
I don't think anyone can say one way or another that a single woman is worse or better as a parent than a married woman. It depends on the woman, her values, and her strenghts and weaknesses. You can't look at this woman's marital status and make your judgments from that, and I agree with you on that point, Ianthe.
T.E.: I haven't seen her on TV; I didn't realize she was presenting herself and behaving in an observeable way to the public. I can't say I agree about single parenting being a good idea, but it certainly may better for a child than to be left in an orphanage. I really do think that the spouse should precede the stork, and the invitation to the stork as well. I think single adoption, women having children on their own, etc. is just another manifestation of people wanting what they want and being able to have it.
You're too kind, T.E. The reason is simply what I said, I'm selfish, I have never, even when I was a child, liked babies or children, I feel nothing in common with women who want children, etc., and there is nothing I like better than the feeling of coming home to an empty house or apartment. I know perfectly well that I'd do a good job as a mother, and people have always told me that I would; I just don't want to be a mother. If I had a kid I'd give it to someone else to raise through the childish stuff and then spend a little time with it and teach it some things when it was old enough to reason. Pure selfish. Or the way men used to parent before they turned into women and started pushing strollers and carrying infants in pouches and started cooking in kitchens which is an absolute disgrace and with things like that allowed to happen no wonder the world is in the mess it's in now. Some people like children and want to be parents more than others do.
Had other responses to some of the lively exchange here but came across this..
Wesley I think the "do no harm" ethic needs to be restored, with the term "harm" properly defined rather than becoming so elastic as to be meaningless and/or to include harmful things as if they weren't harmful.
What do you think?
Which led to me seeking out this (Disclaimer: not sure how close, true it is):
I will follow that method of treatment which according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patient and abstain from whatever is harmful or mischievous.
Is it in myth only that this is spoken by doctors as they enter their profession..?
PS.. Yeah, in hindsighted re-reading, it sure could be left up to some serious (mis)interpretation on the part of the individual reciting it.. :sigh:
Lanthe, thanks for your concern. You are right about living wills too. Thanks again.
Don: How is he doing? Well and soon out of the hospital if not already I hope. Good luck and I'm sure the prayers of everyone here are with him and with you and your family.
I can't believe there are so many people out here missing the point. She is a soverign entity as are all humans and, with the guarantee of the right to medical privacy, she can have as many children as she likes, IVF or naturally.
Those are her rights.
Now what is wrong here is doing so at the expense of other taxpayers. Were she doing this and supporting herself then she is not harming anyone else. When she does this and is on food stamps, TANF, etc then she is taking from hard working tax payers every time she reproduces.
No one should have the right to enslave another because of some perceived right to be fed and taken care of. This is institutionalized theft, period.
I am a middle class individual and my wife has cancer. We paid for IVF in case she was not able to bear children after chemo and radiation. This woman is taking more resources from society in proportion to every child she has that she cannot afford to take care of. This comes from tax dollars, no matter how diluted by the nubmer of tax payers. In a micro sense, she is taking from my pocket and, therefore, my ability to save and rear my own child.
Once you go on welfare or accept food stamps you have a moral obligation to stop having children! Why should others sacrifice to subsidize your whim? You do not have the right to a large family. You do not have a right to free food. The Constitution prohibits this theft, take a look at the 10th amendment, this was put in place for people like this that claim made up rights.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
For those of you too ignorant to understand this it means this: the founding fathers saw it fit to grant limited powers to the federal government. Anything not enumerated in the Constitution is, by definition, unconstitutional for them to do. The powers left are there for the people or for people to grant to their states.
Specific welfare by the government (EITC and TANF for example) are unconstitutional. The "General Welfare" clause means we get roads, a navy, a postal service. It does not mean specific welfare for an unmarried, unemployed brood mare to reproduce on the backs of others.
In our culture, it is standard, today, to have 2 or 3 children. This was not always so, and still isn't in many parts of the world. There are some people who simply love children and want lots of them. I do too! I do feel that it is important to be able to provide a good life for one's children but, once again, what is considered "good" varies widely. I suggest we allow this mom her privacy so that she can gather her strength and do her best for her children.
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