Babies unlimited

It would never happend in China, where they have a strict, one-child per family policy, imposed for population control. But here in the U.S., how many babies you want to have is pretty much up to those having them (and to the availability and reliability of birth control and/or fertility proceedures).

Headlines blared about the birth of octuplets in California last week -- that's eight (8) new babies in one family all at one time. Then news came that the divorced mother already has six (6) children, ages 7, 6, 5, 3, and 2 year old twins. That makes 14 children seven years old and younger !!!!

Why?

CBS/AP reports that "The woman who gave birth to octuplets this week conceived all 14 of her children through in-vitro fertilization, is not married, and has been obsessed with having children since she was a teenager, her mother said." So it's clear that these were all planned pregnancies.

Identified by her family as Nadya Suleman, the mother has a college degree in child and adolescent development and has been studying for a master's degree in counseling. She has said that she wanted to have 12 children. After trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant, she then had sought fertility assistance through in vitro fertilization with a sperm donor. All of her children have been from embryos with the same donor and implanted at various times.

Ms. Suleman's father says she didn't want to have the unused embroys destroyed, but she really had wanted only one more child, not the eight that were apparently implanted. (It could be that less than eight were implanted and some divided in utero.)

This raises ethical questions. Not about whether a woman has the right to have as many children as she wants. The answer to that seems clearly yes, in this country. Some question that right when women keep having babies they can't support and rely on governmental help. But that's as much politics as it is philosophy and ethics.

What is an ethical dilemma is the fertility doctor's decision to implant eight embroys at the same time. That is said to be highly risky and unwise if not outright malpractice. Most experts recommend implanting two, knowing that not all implantations will survive. But not eight.

Was it because Ms. Suleman insisted, so as not to "waste" or destroy the already fertilized embryos? Her father says that there won't be any more babies, because all the embryos have now been used. If she did make that request, it should not overrule medical judgment. Although now that all eight babies seem to have a pretty good chance of surviving, and the mother seems to be doing all right, the medical argument is weaker.

So it comes back to basic questions. Who decides how many babies we need? Only the mother? Only a married couple? The assisting fertility specialist? Only a social planning government? Only the marketplace -- with product endorsements likely to flock to this family and support them for life, as they did the Dionne quintuplets of 75 years ago? Ms. Suleman was quoted as saying she keeps having babies because she "gets paid for it." That was not explained.

If you say the main concern should be for the welfare of the children, then you have to decide whether it would have been better for some of these octuplets not to have been born. And then what about the welfare of the older siblings?

Interesting questions we get into around birth and death (think Terry Shiavo).

Ralph