Choice: unclear on the concept
All the discussions about Nadya Suleman "should" have had so many children are pointless. It's wrong because no one has the right to tell you that you can have, or must have, or can't have, a baby. Or an abortion. That's a decision only you can make.
This is the essence of choice. That sometimes people make choices you wouldn't, that bother you, that you think are stupid or reckless or will cost you more in taxes, doesn't make it an invalid choice.
The kind of pressures that might influence Suleman's choice are fair game, but Suleman is not the bad guy and should be left alone.
People are asking why she wasn't turned down for this last bout of IVF, or presumably any IVF at all, being unmarried and therefore apparently undeserving of children. This quote from an ABC news story is particularly pointed:
The reason she has the octuplets now is because she refused to abort any of the fetuses when it was discovered that 7 of them "took." Number 8 was a suprise. She didn't plan to have eight more.
And note, having 14 children isn't unique. Other Americans have 14 children, born one or two at a time. Take a look at the "quiverfull" movement if you want to see families that size. Of course, they're White, in a traditional nuclear family, and most of them didn't require surgical intervention. So I guess that's okay.
It's true that a doctor who performs an elective procedure has to be careful about following the wishes of a patient who is mentally unstable, but it seems weird to draw a line where actually seeking the services of a doctor to do what the doctor already does makes one insane.
And the extensive questioning of her sanity? That seems to suggest that anyone seeking another baby after having six is mentally ill.
This isn't just someone with no education, barefoot and pregnant. From that same article: "she holds a 2006 degree in child and adolescent development from California State University at Fullerton, and as late as last spring she was studying for a master's degree in counseling, a college official told ABC News." She's living with her parents, who support her.
Not that that would matter anyway. Choice, remember?
I have to wonder what might motivate people to ask such questions. I guess there will be a contingent of people who want to adopt a child but can't, and see it as unfair that someone so "undeserving" can have "as many as she likes." Those who think children are to be reserved only for the right kind of married couples. And there will be those who see the black and brown races taking "us" over. Her Middle Eastern heritage (and her ex-husband's Hispanic heritage, despite the fact that he's been specifically excluded as the IVF sperm donor) can't get overlooked.
The only really legitimate question here is, whether it is a mistake by the fertility doctors in placing so many fertilized eggs, given her personal beliefs against abortion? It places her in a difficult situation.
And if so, that's an issue for her to manage. Not us.
This is the essence of choice. That sometimes people make choices you wouldn't, that bother you, that you think are stupid or reckless or will cost you more in taxes, doesn't make it an invalid choice.
The kind of pressures that might influence Suleman's choice are fair game, but Suleman is not the bad guy and should be left alone.
People are asking why she wasn't turned down for this last bout of IVF, or presumably any IVF at all, being unmarried and therefore apparently undeserving of children. This quote from an ABC news story is particularly pointed:
"Given that she has six young children, it seems to be a perfectly reasonable thing for a fertility specialist to refer her to a psychiatrist for some heavy duty counseling to see what her situation is, to see if she really does want or could handle another child," said George Annas, a bioethics professor at Boston University School of Public Health.She had six children when she got pregnant this last time. Are we now saying a woman with six children shouldn't want more children? Or is it that this last pregnancy resulted in 8 children and she didn't abort most of them?
The reason she has the octuplets now is because she refused to abort any of the fetuses when it was discovered that 7 of them "took." Number 8 was a suprise. She didn't plan to have eight more.
And note, having 14 children isn't unique. Other Americans have 14 children, born one or two at a time. Take a look at the "quiverfull" movement if you want to see families that size. Of course, they're White, in a traditional nuclear family, and most of them didn't require surgical intervention. So I guess that's okay.
It's true that a doctor who performs an elective procedure has to be careful about following the wishes of a patient who is mentally unstable, but it seems weird to draw a line where actually seeking the services of a doctor to do what the doctor already does makes one insane.
And the extensive questioning of her sanity? That seems to suggest that anyone seeking another baby after having six is mentally ill.
This isn't just someone with no education, barefoot and pregnant. From that same article: "she holds a 2006 degree in child and adolescent development from California State University at Fullerton, and as late as last spring she was studying for a master's degree in counseling, a college official told ABC News." She's living with her parents, who support her.
Not that that would matter anyway. Choice, remember?
I have to wonder what might motivate people to ask such questions. I guess there will be a contingent of people who want to adopt a child but can't, and see it as unfair that someone so "undeserving" can have "as many as she likes." Those who think children are to be reserved only for the right kind of married couples. And there will be those who see the black and brown races taking "us" over. Her Middle Eastern heritage (and her ex-husband's Hispanic heritage, despite the fact that he's been specifically excluded as the IVF sperm donor) can't get overlooked.
The only really legitimate question here is, whether it is a mistake by the fertility doctors in placing so many fertilized eggs, given her personal beliefs against abortion? It places her in a difficult situation.
And if so, that's an issue for her to manage. Not us.
"The reason she has the octuplets now is because she refused to abort any of the fetuses when it was discovered that 7 of them "took." Number 8 was a suprise. She didn't plan to have eight more."
This is where the story gets strange and a bit disturbing, not where the media has located it (her single motherhood, etc).
Ethical IVF has very clear guidelines - no more than two embryos transferred, and one embryo only where the woman is young and fertile. With a recent twin pregnancy, her fertility is obvious. Transferring two or three embryos would have been ethically questionable; did someone really transfer eight or more into her? If so, that was a blatantly obvious breach of medical ethics, harmful to both mother and babies.
But nobody knows, and nobody's talking. Who knows. Perhaps this wasn't IVF at all.
The other aspect I find disturbing from a feminist point of view is that it seems (and again, maybe we're not getting the full story) that the grandmother is just expected to give up all of her life to care for these children. Because that's what women do.
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Thanks for the additional information, lauredhel. I saw somewhere that they implanted four, and that they all twinned, but that sounds a bit like a rationalization: "we did maybe more than we should have, but not a lot more, but oops."
The grandmother's expected participation in raising the kids as a built in babywatcher is unpleasantly familiar. There's a stereotype of unmarried poor women having babies and leaving them with grandma to raise so they can continue to go out and get pregnant again. The assumption is that grandma has nothing better to do with her life, and of course loves babies, because she's an old woman. The mother is young and shouldn't be tied down. Win-win, supposedly.
Even if the grandmother was involved in the raising of the other children, there's no guarantee she wants to do more than double the work now.
And it seems likely her previous caretaking will have been less intensive, since the new mom and her parents moved in together only recently.
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