When I initially heard that a California woman had given birth to octuplets last week, I didn’t feel an overwhelming sense of surprise because I was familiar with the upsurge of in-vitro fertilization patients. However, when I learned the mother, 33-year-old Nadya Suleman was single, living with her parents and already had six children (also conceived through in-vitro fertilization), I became concerned.
I was concerned because not only does Suleman now have 14 children, but she’s also unemployed. One of my primary thoughts was, “How will she be able to provide for 14 children?” That’s when, as a taxpayer, I became even more concerned and began to do the math.
It’s estimated that Suleman’s eight newborns will have medical bills that cost up to $400,000 each by the time they’re released from the hospital. When you factor in the daily necessities of life such as feeding and clothing (including diapers) eight additional children, you see how quickly the costs can accumulate.
Perhaps Suleman comes from a well-established family and will be able to take care of her 14 children without assistance from the government. Or, perhaps she thinks she’ll be the newest reality television star with her passel of children like “The Duggers, 18 and Counting” or “Jon and Kate Plus 8,” who is a couple with sextuplets and twins. Coincidentally, Jon and Kate are paid through the television network and have received tons of freebies through the show including various trips, a tummy tuck for mom and a hair implant for dad.
Despite Suleman’s plans to financially care for her broad, there are other growing concerns. Suleman may quite possibly suffer from some sort of mental illness. After all, her mother was quoted as saying that the 33-year-old is “obsessed with kids” and wants to be a “parenting expert.”
If Suleman does have a mental disability, than it’s safe to question the quality of care all 14 of her children will receive. While I know of cases where mentally disabled people conceived children and successfully raised them; I also understand the complexity of the issue. Raising just a couple of children can be challenging to a mentally competent parent, let alone one who has some sort of disorder. Even if Suleman doesn’t have any mental limitations, it seems as though someone would have intervened. This leads me to another growing concern: the fertility specialists involved in Suleman’s treatment.
The American Society of Reproductive Medicine released a report in 2004 that stated “fertility programs may withhold services when they can provide well-substantiated judgments that the child will not receive adequate care.”
There is a serious issue of safety for the mother as well as the fetuses in her womb when she carries more than a few children. While it’s been done, the onset of problems increases with the number of fetuses. Dr. Thomas Murray of the Hastings Center in New York summed it up best when he said “A human uterus is not built for eight passengers; the odds for each child to be born alive and healthy go down as the number of in the lifeboat go up.”
Knowing that Suleman was unemployed, already had six children, and was at risk carrying eight fetuses, it seems that the medical personnel would have been more involved in conducting detailed evaluations (mental and otherwise) on Suleman.
However, being more involved could have been a double-edged sword because it teeters the line of human rights as well as patient rights. Maybe that’s why medical personnel didn’t push the issue further.
Suleman’s situation is proof that specifics of reproductive medicine need to be reevaluated. I’m an avid supporter of fertility drugs and other reproductive measures, but it has to be carried out in a responsible manner…doctors owe it to the unborn children they help create as much as they do to the parents they serve.
