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Earlier this month, I asked you about your thoughts on family planning and how factors that include money, time, religious beliefs and environmental concerns all play into your decisions. So along those lines, I thought I’d bring up the California couple that gave birth to octuplets – six boys and two girls, born weighing between 1 pound 8 ounces and 3 pounds, 4 ounces and delivered via Cesarean section. (The babies, by the way, are all breathing on their own and five have started bottle feeding. And, according to news reports, the woman who gave birth to them also has six other children.)
Yesterday, The Los Angeles Times wrote about the risks and ethics involved in such a pregnancy. “When we see something like this in the general fertility world, it gives us the heebie-jeebies,” Michael Tucker, a clinical embryologist in Atlanta and a leading researcher in infertility treatment, told the LA Times. He added that, “if a medical practitioner had anything to do with it, there’s some degree of inappropriate medical therapy.”
The reporters noted that these multiple births not only involve the potential for all kinds of health problems for mother and babies; they also “consume enormous financial resources for hospitals, health insurers and families.”
Some people have strong opinions on this issue. On The Seattle Times website, a woman who identified herself as Bothell mom wrote: “This woman went into the hospital and had a ‘litter’ like an animal. This is going to cost society at some point. There is NO way you can convince me that this family is going to foot this bill on their own for the lives of these kids. Unless this family is pulling in A-List Hollywood paychecks, they’re going to end up being a drain on taxpayers. …”
What do you think?
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je9je9 on January 31 at 7:09 a.m.
We celebrate these “miracle” births and the births of babies where it takes millions of dollars to save them when we don’t have the money for free vaccinations any more. Of course I’d want my own baby saved, but a society has to look at the bigger picture. I think doctors who are allowing these multiple births are playing God.
jimmahoney on February 04 at 11:03 a.m.
In 1971 Germaine Greer, in her book, “The Female Eunuch” ( asked women to examine the way they thought about their lives, bodies, sex, love and society.
In her 1984 book “Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility” Greer argued that in progressive capitalistic or corporate cultures the government, army and church are taking over many former family functions.
She tied the issues of family and fertility control with waging nuclear war by saying people who want to control and limit fertility may be more connected to bottom-line, here-and-now corporate and financial benefits, and also feel less connected to the next generation of children and families.
Around that time the movie “The Stepford Wives” addressed the way women felt they were being turned into robots-serving -others by culture.
There is a recent remake of that movie, plus a remake of “Invasion of The Body Snatchers.” How interesting! Both movies illustrate the fear of privileged corporate and governmental institutions turning citizens and families into “widgets for profit.”
I remember reading an article Germaine Greer wrote in the late 70s after she had a sojourn in India talking about the benefits of family planning in India. She met with a group of sociable Indian mothers, caring for their children, who shared their awareness of the faults of overpopulation.
After leaving the warmth of their social embrace she agreed with herself that, indeed there were too many people in India by one, herself.
Like a Dandelion that pushes its way through a crack in the sidewalk, life is precious, has its own demands and loves us even if we won’t love it, and will not be denied.
As one parent, I applaud the audacity of life.
Respectfully,
Jim Mahoney