This situation has been ALL OVER the news around here (I’m fairly close to Bellflower here in southern CA), but one of the things I was thinking about this morning was something that happened on the day the babies were born. Before anyone knew anything about the mom (single, already had 6 kids, etc), one of the local newscasters on the show that I watch in the morning commented “I wonder how the dad is doing, having seen a couple of c-sections, I know some guys don’t handle the operating room well”. I didn’t think anything about it at the time. It’s a running joke on the show that he & his wife have 2 sets of twin girls to deal with. The 2 ladies on the show just said “Oh, it’s all about the mom”. Everyone was so enamoured of the miracle octouplets. But as soon as it came out that she was single and had gotten pregnant via in-vitro and already had 6 kids, the tone of the conversation changed and it became all about the ethics of implanting the multiple embryos. No one even speculated about possible mental issues w/the mom. It was suddenly all about “What kind of doctor would do that? She must have gone to Mexico. No doctor HERE would do that”. It was just very wierd

Who’s been violating HIPAA and talking about her?

Yes, she already had a bunch of kids, and she still convinced her doctor to give her fertility drugs.  Many other fertility specialists have said they would never give these drugs to someone who already had lots of children.

But look at the (horrid) Duggars.  They don’t need drugs, but they are determined to have a massive family.  Look at Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.  They have 6 and are gunning for more, both adopted and biological. 

Look at the Gosselins—they had a hard time conceiving, used drugs and got twins.  Decided they wanted one more, or maybe a second set of twins…they used drugs and got 7.  One died in utero, but they looked at that sonogram of a half dozen and went and started naming them.  They didn’t feel like they could choose a selective abortion, and even if I think that is fucking nuts, it doesn’t make them mentally ill nor deny their right to carry all those feti to term.  Kate even talks about adopting another baby sometimes!!!

Is the mental illness angle coming in b/c this family isn’t even half white, like the Gosselins?  B/c the Gosselins and Duggars get TV shows b/c they have so many children.  The MSM doesn’t seem to think there is anything wrong with their crazy reproduction. 

The octuplet lady hasn’t caught up to the Duggars yet, but she’s considered mentally ill?

Something wickedly patriarchal is going on here.

It doesn’t make sense that we would have an inborn urge to have babies that is a separate thing from the urge to have sex

Well, that’s too bad, because it very definitely happens. Have you not ever spoken to a woman who strongly, physically—not just intellectually and emotionally—wants to bear children? A small number of them will go so far as to say it’s a very particular physical yearning, as strong and distinct as lust or food cravings or the need to breastfeed.

The take-home message here is not that those women are so culturally conditioned that their bodies act out the drama of cultural pressure in some kind of funky psychosomatic spasm. Rather, the fact is—even if it doesn’t make sense to your satisfaction—that some small number of women have passionate urges to have babies, separate from the urge to have sex. Some women have the culturally conditioned desire to have babies, separate from the desire to have sex. Some women want to have sex and don’t mind if they have babies. And some women—like me, and I think you as well—don’t want to have babies under any circumstances, either because we have an inborn aversion to the process or because the cultural conditioning just never took hold.

Look: I think you are right that if this woman is driven by anything, it’s the collector’s urge, not the maternal drive. But that doesn’t make the maternal drive artificial, despite its rarity: an instinct doesn’t have to be universal to be real. Not ALL women are born with the desire for babies. I will go so far as to say that most of us aren’t; most of us do have to be bribed with sex or culturally brainwashed into putting up with babies. But physical instincts that you and I don’t happen to share don’t magically become imposed cultural byproducts just because we don’t feel them. Women differ.

I think this case is more like a severe case of “munchausen” syndrome. Pregnancy, and possibly being the helpless mother of young children, is *the way* she gets the attention she craves.  This woman clearly likes being pregnant, and likes the attention she receives at that point. I get that. I loved being pregnant—the hormones are some powerful shit. I loved putting lots of dull crap on hold to be with my babies.  But the fun part of having babies is only a tiny part of the huge responsibility part, the expense, and the struggle of it.  She already had the jolt from the first six and regardless of how pleasurable that was a sane, adult woman, would have put her own pleasure at babies to one side.  Its not at all suspect to start thinking this woman is clinically nuts.  She *is* nuts. Not for wanting the kids but for failing to grasp that want isn’t enough.  She has *six existing children* one of whom is autistic.  That ought to have significantly crimped her style in wanting to do it all over again because the new kids are going to be just too costly. That’s the crazy part of this equation—that is why this woman is looked on as nuts. Because she is objectively in a very tough situation with the children she already has—financially, socially, emotionally, intellectually.  And she has gone ahead and made all their lives eight times more difficult.  Debating whether she likes kids or pregnancy or what is irrelevant.  Starving people can’t afford caviar.  A woman with six kids can’t afford eight more.  Like or want just doesn’t come into it.  Watch her go ahead and sue her fertility specialist because she can’t afford those children. Watch her come out of her fugue state and realize how fucked she is and try to blame everyone but herself. And watch those kids get parcelled out to relatives and the state.

aimai

Who’s been violating HIPAA and talking about her?

The woman herself and her mother.

The MSM doesn’t seem to think there is anything wrong with their crazy reproduction.

I don’t know about that—there’s a distinct freak show attitude towards all of those shows.  It’s not just the Duggars and the Gosselins—there’s a whole show on TLC devoted just to people with large families.

And let me say, the older people on those shows who have large families are some of the unhappiest people I’ve ever seen in my life.  They remind me of my now-divorced aunt and uncle, who slept in separate beds for years, waiting for the day their youngest child (of 8) would finally leave the house so they wouldn’t have to deal with each other any more.  That’s family values for you.

I agree that no one has any right to tell this woman how many children she can have in total, but there’s no reason why medical best practices shouldn’t apply to IVF.  Implanting eight embryos is insane.  It’s dangerous for the mother, it’s dangerous for the fetuses, and it’s a gross waste of medical resources.  This multiple birth required dozens of doctors and staff whose services would have been better used elsewhere.

Well, I sure as hell had a baby urge for some years, and having actual babies did make it go away.

BUT!  Not every woman goes through the baby dream thing, and I know men who were it with it too (including one set of newlyweds who were clear with each other at the beginning of their courtship that they didn’t want children ... and then used me as an intermediary when they BOTH started having baby dreams and urges ...).

Common?  Yeah.  Universal?  Nope.  Essential?  Fuck off and die.

Small children aren’t animals, of course

(scratches head) ... after babysitting for years and rearing a couple of my own, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

Wow, the facts really get lost quickly, don’t they?  Reading actual news stories I find out:

She had six children, all via IVF from the same donor (not her ex-husband), mostly single births (one set of twins, I think). Friends and neighbors say she’s a good mom.  She’s got a recent degree and is working on her Master’s.

She wanted another child, and did what she did the previous six times. 

She didn’t want eight more all at once.  This wasn’t a Guinness World Records attempt.

They implanted a bunch of embryos.  Many more took than they expected.

She is against abortion for herself, so chose to carry all the fetuses to term.  This could have been dangerous for her or the fetuses, but it’s her choice. 

She lives with her parents support her in her choices.

The only real issue here is whether the doctors were responsible in implanting eight embryos given her desire to not have eight babies plus her known unwillingness to abort.  If it was a risk she knew and accepted, that’s kind of the end of the story.

‘Talk about crazy cat lady syndrome: in L.A., two spinster sisters collected and fed hundreds upon hundreds of rats in their home.

And not the pet store variety either, to the consternation of the neighbors who were afraid to allow their children play in the backyard.

http://www.laweekly.com/2009-01-01/news/palisades-rathouse-case-settled-out-of-court/

Yes, it would seem that this syndrome would be related to the woman with 14 babies from just two litters: a compulsion to collect, that defies rationality.

Maybe not all “quiver-full” Christian women are also afflicted, because I’ve read that some of the women are pressured by husbands, who in that particular branch of wack job Christianity, revel in the patriarchy-approved macho.

Oh, and Mnemosyne, on Quiverfull and the like:  “And let me say, the older people on those shows who have large families are some of the unhappiest people I’ve ever seen in my life.” 

I can imagine.  It is bad enough to raise a big brood as an adult for some reason outside of really loving kids and wanting a bunch.  At least they had some say in the matter.

But the unhappiest people I knew when I was a kid or a teen were older girls in a big family.  They were cast in the role of junior mom.  Kids are kids and don’t have the emotional resources to be a mom yet, and didn’t choose that life.

The theory that women have a natural urge to have babies is one that’s got a long and ignoble sexist history, and it was used to explain away women’s sexual urges without men admitting that women and men’s sexual urges are more alike than different.

I’ve always assumed that, if there is any truth at all to the idea of the “biological clock”, it’s probably all about what hippy-dippy types call your Saturn Return.  In other words, you reach a turning point, generally circa age 30, where you’re ready to settle down, get serious about the world, etc. 

I would also guess that, if this is the case, men feel it too, but just aren’t supposed to talk about it, similar to the way women aren’t supposed to talk about wanting sex.

I loved being pregnant—the hormones are some powerful shit. I loved putting lots of dull crap on hold to be with my babies.  But the fun part of having babies is only a tiny part of the huge responsibility part, the expense, and the struggle of it.

This is the sense I get of Ma Duggar and why she continues to have more and more children—what she loves is the way that pregnant women and new mothers get to be the center of attention, not so much that she loves being a parent.

Sorry, this is just a pet peeve that I can’t refrain from addressing.

Small children aren’t animals, of course,

Of course they are. Humans are animals, too.

Okay, resume.

She wanted another child, and did what she did the previous six times.

She didn’t want eight more all at once.  This wasn’t a Guinness World Records attempt.

They implanted a bunch of embryos.  Many more took than they expected.

I’m taking these claims with a big, old grain of salt.  First, no one knows who the doctor is; the woman won’t say.  So we don’t have a confirmation of what happened.  Second, no doctor is going to implant eight embryos in a young woman and let her think that she’ll only wind up with one baby*.  Even for a woman over 40, who is more likely to lose an implanted embryo, it’s rare to implant more than two embryos at one time.

*And that claim alone makes me think she’s lying.

keshmeshi, why assume she’s lying?  Do you think she really wanted to carry and bear seven or eight babies at once?  Six children isn’t a pathologically sized family.  Seven or eight isn’t, either.

Earlier comments include one saying she already had a “litter” of six, as if it were six all at once.  It wasn’t.  Her pattern is to have one baby at a time.

Saying that no doctor would, well, *anything*, flies in the face of what doctors will do.  Maybe this is what they had to do before to get any babies at all, and it backfired this last time.

But maybe you’re right.  Maybe she is lying.  If so, she made a decision that people don’t want her to make, but many think is okay for other women to make (women who are White and in patriarchally sanctioned relationships), and is tailoring her responses to minimize the attacks.

Which doesn’t seem to be working very well anyway.  “Unwed mother has two litters of brown baybeez” seems to be hard to erase from people’s minds.

She may or may not have “wanted another child” but she definitely didn’t have the *right* to have another child, let alone another eight children.  Any more than a crazy woman would have the right to grab orphans out of an orphanage and try to parent them just because she got the urge. To the extent we believe that the children actually have rights—to life, liberty, and happiness—her actions are perverse and cruel. 

Quite a few facts of the case are actually pretty well known at this point—she was not gainfully employed, or studying to become employed, and in any event 14 children put the kibosh on that since those master of the universe jobs with bonuses that could actually enable her to pay for the children’s extreme needs dont’ go to women with minimal education and 14 kids. She isn’t “doing this with the help of her parents” she is destroying their fragile lives by imposing on them. This is simply insane and I don’t see any need to ritually dance around it. 

The public worship of the duggars et al is certainly partly to blame but people like this have gone quietly crazy for years without needing any kind of public input or encouragement.  I’d also like to point out that this woman sounds very much like the teenage boys described by Susan Faludi in “Stiffed.”  In that book, which I highly recommend, Faludi explores the meaningless sameness of suburbia and its impact on a group of boys who gain a brief notoriety by having a sex ring and labeling themselves the “spur posse.”  She discovers and interviews the boys just as they are becoming “famous” for being, well, individuals in a mass culture of mediocrity. That they are famous for the extremely mediocre fact that they tried to screw a bunch of teenage girls is irrelevant. They are happy, finally, because they are going to be flown out to New York and appear for their fifteen minutes on national tv. They are naieve enough to believe, as this woman is, that they can end up *being* someone, a celebrity, and being paid well for simply being distinctive, having a “story to tell” being an “individual.”  Of course nothing could be further from the truth but Faludi’s interviews reveal that the boys are actually pretty well grasping that there’s no other route to fame and fortune *but* notoreity for them.  Its striking and interesting that the first thing this woman has done is *gotten herself an agent* and tried to market herself to Oprah.

aimai

a

keshmeshi, why assume she’s lying?

Not to answer for keshmeshi, but I think the assumption that there’s more to this story than meets the eye (at least) is the fact that implanting 8 embryos is not standard procedure.  There’s no way it could be a serendipity thing, because doctors don’t do that in the first place.  It’s like explaining away your facelift by saying that your doctor was digging around in your face at your annual well-woman exam and you felt like while she was in there, she should go ahead and give you a facelift. 

Of course, she might not be lying, exactly.  But it simply cannot be true that this was a routine IVF procedure.  Because it wasn’t.

Eleventy seven kids is the newest social security program for the underclass in the coming depression.  She’s got her own little troupe of Oliver Twist’s right at her feet.  Right now you’re outraged.  Tomorrow you’ll be jealous.

Enjoy.

And that claim alone makes me think she’s lying.

Yep, the story here is the rogue doctor(s) dishing out doses of embyro implantation like a quack writing scrips for Oxycontin. There’s also reporting that the mother worked in an IVF clinic. So the cynic in me suspects that the family did it for the money, perhaps with the collusion of the clinic, and that it’s not much different from the doctors who help get 60-year-old women pregnant for the publicity.

FWIW, I had no idea this person was a person of color until JoAnne kept mentioning it on this very thread. I still thought she was either disturbed or very, very clueless. None of the coverage I’ve seen has even mentioned her ethnicity (whatever it is…I still don’t know). I think the “It’s OK if you’re Whitey” tack is a red herring with this.

She’s bankrupt, but pursuing VERY expensive IVF therapy? She’s bankrupt and *homeless* with six existing children, one special needs child, but pursuing VERY expensive IVF therapy?

There’s something irresponsible, if not unbalanced, about that picture.

I’m confused at how a woman can have an “intense physical urge” to have children.

For me, I have an intense psychological urge away from children. Like, thinking about pregnancy actually causes a sharp pain in my uterus-area in the “do not want!” variety. But that doesn’t mean that I have a intense physical urge to not have children, breastfeed, etc, it means that I have a strong psychological urge to not have children that manifests itself in psychosomatic symptoms. Physical urges generally the body’s way of describing arousals: hunger, sex, bathroom, sleep. These things require stimulation to be coming from the body in order to be triggered: stomach contractions, genital stimulus, full bladder, extreme fatigue.

How do intense physical urges manifest themselves, and what triggers them?

Do you think she really wanted to carry and bear seven or eight babies at once?

Since she’s a previous IVF patient who specifically chose not to selectively terminate, it’s pretty hard not to come to the conclusion that she wanted to have all eight of them.  As other people have mentioned, implanting 8 embryos at once is no longer standard procedure—especially with a younger patient—specifically because of the rash of sextuplets and above that occurred. 

It’s more of a crapshoot with fertility drugs—IIRC, the Gosselins took fertility drugs—because you really can’t guess how many eggs your ovaries are going to decide to release.  But it’s hard for me to believe that someone who’d already had IVF would have no idea at all that 8 embryos could potentially result in 8 babies.

And on-topic, I know very little about this case but I agree that there is something that stinks about the way it’s been reported on.

The media’s been like a rabid dog off the leash for a long time now when it comes to celebrity/lifestyle pregnancy stories. There’s no reason in the world to think that they would suddenly behave appropriately with the salacious details about this pregnancy came to light. I feel bad for this woman because she’s not any closer to getting the help she needs (both psychological and financial) and she’s going to be raked over the coals for our titilation.

Balls to the idea that IVF clinics should offer a psych test: I would rather have the occasional “scandalous” story like this than have IVF clinics get to have little power trips on the lives of women who have the audacity to want children and can’t conceive naturally.

I’m not saying that she has to be lying.  It’s just that the story seems awfully improbable.  I don’t think it’s impossible for her to find a doctor willing to implant an unsafe number of embryos.  The extra detail of the doctor letting her think that she’d wind up with one live birth has me scratching my head.

I only know the aspects of this through the media, but there’s an interesting post I found via Feministing at Rachel’s Tavern where she discusses thecosts and health issues of multiple births.

I do think people did a total 180 when they went from thinking some white woman had valiently produced eight babies at once, to finding out it was a non-white woman who was unmarried and who was (supposedly) having financial problems (it seems she filed for bankruptcy). All of a sudden it wasn’t so cute and such a “miracle” (please, for the love of the FSM STOP CALLING IT A MIRACLE)  and no one was pleased with the possibility of a woman (of color) leeching off the taxpayers and trying to use this for monetary gain. I guess we’ll know in the coming weeks.

As for the biological clock, we had this discussion waaay back in my undergrad days and one of my professors mentioned that before the invention of the birth control pill you never heard anything about a woman’s “biological clock” and that it was a response to women putting off child bearing. Before wide spread access to contraception, if you were a woman and you had sex enough you’d get pregnant eventually (unless you or your partner were infertile) so a biological clock made no biological sense.

Does anyone know about this? Aprox. when did the phrase “biological clock” come into the vernacular? I’d be interested to know if my professor was on to something.

Overall, I’d agree with your statements about the whole “biological clock” thing, except that I have experienced it. I have no idea, but around age 20 I went from being ambivalent about having children eventually (meaning I was pretty sure I wanted some, eventually, but definitely not now and I’m not sure how comfortable I am with that idea) to “I need babies NOW!!!!!!!!!” It felt very instinctual, and it was a very very strong urge.

Of course, I certainly didn’t do anything crazy about it, but I did find that having an extremely, dare I say desperate?, urge to have children while being financially unable to support them and thus not trying to conceive to be rather demoralizing and extremely frustrating.

It felt very instinctual

I think part of the point is that a lot of things “feel” instinctual.  That doesn’t mean they are actual biological urges in the way that, for example, taking a shit is an actual biological urge.

I never saw the mainstream media strongly criticize multiple births or suggest the children were anything other than miracles from God (usually with little or no mention of the medical techniques that made the “miracles” possible) until these octuplets were born.  Now every news source is poring over the freakishness of IVF, tut-tutting about the health risks for the infants (a topic that I’d never seen even mentioned before; even naturally occurring twins are susceptible to health problems, much less litters of babies born weeks or months premature, but the issue is usually glossed over in favor of cooing over all those adorable pocket-size babies), and speculating nastily about the mother’s mental health.  The tone of the coverage certainly changes when it involves an unmarried woman of color.

I know some happy big families (my Italian father-in-law was one of thirteen children, and they’re as sweet and loving a bunch of people as you could hope to meet), but it can be a hard way to grow up.  I don’t know if it’s even possible to have a healthy family of that size nowadays, when couples are unlikely to have an extended family on hand to help out with the kids.  Big families of earlier generations could get by because there were lots of aunts, uncles, and grandparents around, and even then the older daughters in the family usually got unfairly conscripted into service as surrogate moms.

Mighty Ponygirl, I’m not sure I’d call it a physical urge, but it was almost that level of strength. I likened it to being beat in the head with a sledgehammer saying HAVE BABIES NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  It was maddening, infuriating, and actually rather depressing because not only did I get that urge young, but because I was young I was not in a good place to have children, and thus didn’t.

And, for the record, my first child will be born approximately 5 years after I started getting the baby rabies.

I don’t think this urge is by any means universal, necessary, or at all limited to gender. But it does exist.

She may or may not have “wanted another child” but she definitely didn’t have the *right* to have another child, let alone another eight children.

The problem with that is, despite me thinking that she’s completely fucking irresponsible, that sentiment puts you in the position of stating that you, or I, or some government bureaucrat, or The Rt Reverend Wingnut Dickhead should decide what a woman does with her body more than she should, or more generally what a couple should do with their autonomy than they do.

I don’t wanna state that.  Despite the fact that I think she’s an irresponsible moron, count me on the side of defending her *right* to do this.

One thing to add on the general issue. In the UK, the HFEA has put forward a set of guidelines that aim to limit the number of multiple births with IVF, in return for a guarantee of multiple cycles. That’s also increasingly the case in other European countries with universal healthcare. Multiple implantation is a hedge when the number of cycles is limited.

When you have a public healthcare system, there’s an understanding that resources are meant to be pooled for the greater good; here, you have a private facility that is basically engaged in stunt fertility, and to hell with the conseqeunces.

Let’s try a different hypothetical: is it a threat to a woman’s bodily autonomy if a state’s medical ethics guidelines prohibits a plastic surgeon from making someone look like Artemis of Ephesus?

FWIW, I had no idea this person was a person of color until JoAnne kept mentioning it on this very thread. I still thought she was either disturbed or very, very clueless. None of the coverage I’ve seen has even mentioned her ethnicity (whatever it is…I still don’t know). I think the “It’s OK if you’re Whitey” tack is a red herring with this.

I thought they were Iraqi but that was from an article a while ago which revealed the father was going back to Iraq to work. I thought it mentioned that that was his native home, so if not then I apologize.

puts you in the position of stating that you, or I, or some government bureaucrat, or The Rt Reverend Wingnut Dickhead should decide what a woman does with her body

With respect, Phoenician, it’s also what a doctor did with her body, and that crosses over from the domain of bodily autonomy to one of medical ethics. I think it’s a tough question, especially in the context of a you-get-what-you-pay-for healthcare system that tacitly accepts doctor-shopping and prescriptions- and procedures-on-demand, but even there there’s a social obligation to restrict quack medicine.

Something about the attention this story’s garnered is so vile. My skin crawls as we all hold up yet another woman who made a choice: she’s mentally ill, she’s stupid, she shouldn’t be “allowed”, she’s this that and the other. It’s sickening that the world gets an opinion on this.

It seems to be difficult to get actual hard facts on this situation.

I don’t think much of her choices, because humans aren’t meant to deal with that many infants at one time. She has 2.66 to 4 times the maximum number of young infants per caregiver in a state-licensed infant day care.  Yes, she probably got the IVF procedure done outside the US.

As for making money off the kids, that’s been done for every high-order multiple since the Dionne quints.

One hard fact: whoever performed the implantation didn’t have the courage (or belief that they’d escape sanction) to stand behind the mother and provide medical care for most of her pregnancy.

And I agree with other commentators that many details of the story are bizarre and are probably being misrepresented or misreported.

Whether or not there’s a biological urge to have babies (as opposed to the much more obvious urge to have sex), I’m pretty sure the “biological clock” is a product of cultural pressure, coupled with the rational understanding that, as women, we do have only a limited window of time to reproduce.  Of course, our culture exaggerates the actual biological time limit with scare stories about how our uteruses will dry up if we aren’t married and pregnant by our 25th birthdays (and we’ll probably be too old and ugly for any man to want to impregnate us anyway), so media hysteria and pragmatic concerns about when to have children feed off each other in a vicious cycle that can cause women to panic and decide they MUST GET KNOCKED UP RIGHT NOW OR ALL IS LOST.

Count me as another one with the pregnancy urge.  Sometimes it is an urge to be a mother and sometimes it is just a craving to be pregnant.  I have had these feelings since puberty and both of my sisters report feeling the same way.  I know that it is not universal because I know plenty of people who don’t have it or feel the exact opposite, but I can attest that it is a real thing.

Now that I think about it, these feelings have declined quite a bit since I have been on hormonal contraception.  Maybe that indicates that is was hormonal?

I’ve always assumed that, if there is any truth at all to the idea of the “biological clock”, it’s probably all about what hippy-dippy types call your Saturn Return.  In other words, you reach a turning point, generally circa age 30, where you’re ready to settle down, get serious about the world, etc.

I would also guess that, if this is the case, men feel it too, but just aren’t supposed to talk about it, similar to the way women aren’t supposed to talk about wanting sex.

Depends on the degree of socialization, constraints based on social pressures/socio-economic circumstances, and how one’s physical appearance reveals/masks your true age. 

Also, don’t forget the capability of many males to extend living the late teens/early 20’s lifestyle well into their 60’s.  Came across plenty of them during my post-college life.

Oh, I have the “pregnancy urge”.  I just doubt it’s biologically oriented.  I’ve always guessed that I have it because I’m the eldest daughter of a woman who had 4 children.  My mother was almost constantly pregnant throughout my early childhood.  I spent a lot of my older childhood and teen years around babies and small children, including providing a certain degree of childcare.  It’s just always felt very, very right to me. 

I’m at a point in my life where I’m quite ready, emotionally, to have a child, but definitely not ready financially.  Which, just as others have said, feels really, really weird.  But I think this is more because of the disconnect between something so deeply psychological and something so very artificial.  Especially because I’ve always known plenty of people who had children they couldn’t entirely afford.  Holding off having a child now is kind of like holding off eating a cupcake at 6pm—I know I shouldn’t, but I want to.  Humans aren’t terribly good at making sensible choices and avoiding potentially damaging ones.  So it stands to reason that though my brain knows it would be wrong to bring a child into the world at this point in my life, another deeper part of me is going all Veruca Salt about it.

Its important to keep an open mind, but not so open that anything can walk through it.  Saying that this woman should not have had eight more premature births at one go because she is broke, crazy, living off her bankrupt parents, unemployed and now unemployable etc…. is merely sensible. Its not a slippery slope to “some goverment bureacrat” deciding “what a woman does with her body. Its called social commentary and she’s made herself fair game for that by attempting to *sell her story* and specifically her story of how she’s a “child rearing expert.”  But all this handwringing about some hypothetical government bureaucrat ignores the very basic fact that, yeah, when someone else pays the piper someone else is going to call the tune.  If we were ever lucky enough to get universal health care I’d want to very carefully balance a human being’s right to reproduce against the cost to society and to the medical system of allowing them to do whatever they want unsustainably.  As I read the story she “used money she’d gotten from a legal settlement” to pay for the IVF so in today’s capitalist, anything goes, society she got what she paid for.  But there is no way in hell that she or her bankrupt parents (they are the ones who went bankrupt and had to sell their house and move in with her in the house they had bought for her) are going to be able to pay for those kids.  And the taxpayers are going to do it. That’s not a problem because she is a “woman of color” or the kids are—that’s a problem because *this* crazy woman has now single handedly produced 14 needy kids whose needs are going to push the system that serves *other* kids of color and no color, other seniors of all colors, to the breaking point. And for what? for one woman’s vanity and self obsession?  As for the “rt reverend wingnut dickhead” those guys don’t retreat from judgement, or stop trying to control the shots publicly, *regardless of what we do or say* and the only way to fight back is to fight back on a case by case basis. I’m not willing to say that there are no cases where a person’s right to self determination isn’t limited by societies norms. I think there are.  The pregnancy fell into a grey area of self determination, but it produced 14 children who have rights—and their rights ought to be respected. One of the rights they have that should be respected is the right to be raised without poverty or neglect.  Frankly, I think the first six kids had a right that was violated by the mother and *their* rights ought to have been legally enforced.

aimai

aimai

Wait, what’s wrong with comparing this woman (who I had no idea wasn’t white, in fact, I thought it was nice that finally a white woman was being called crazy for having babies) and the Duggars and that Lifetime show Jack and Kate plus Eight and every other family who has litters of babies to animal hoarders? 

The shoe seems to fit, really.  Society starts getting uncomfortable once a person takes on what, maybe six or seven cats?  Which is the same number of babies where people start feeling uncomfortable.  No, not that eight is the magic mental illness number.  But once you voluntarily take on the task of having nine or ten animals, of any species, depend on you for their very survival, the presumption is that you’re nuts.  And no, you don’t get a pass just because your sky fairy tells you that you can’t have an abortion.  If anything, that’s an awfully convenient excuse to avoid treatment and frankly, further proof of mental illness.

And no, women cannot do “anything” they want with their bodies.  Not when having 8 or 14 or 19 babies is going to destroy the entire world.  I mean, really, that’s three families responsible for two separate elementary school classes.  Your uterus and unmedicated compulsions to birth do not grant you the right to hurry along the depletion of global resources that we ALL share.

Mighty PonyGirl said: Balls to the idea that IVF clinics should offer a psych test:

Just a quick sidebar, when I signed up to be an egg donor in 1993, I went through a battery of physical and mental tests. I took the Minnesota Multiphasic test, had an interview that went deeply into my family health and background, tested for everything under the sun, etc. etc. Plus training on how to shoot myself up with hormones.

I don’t know if they do the same for people going through IVF for themselves, but they definitely did heavy duty screening of this donor.

Is it not a basic tenet of biological science that organisms exist primarily to reproduce- to continue the species? If so, would not both men and women have that same biological urge?

The details of this case do not add up. 
Criticism of her choice, and the choice of her doctor, is not exactly about reproductive rights.  A woman does not have a right to get eight embryos deposited into her uterus by a doctor.  If eight arrive there naturally, well there’s nothing anyone can (or should) do about that.  But another entity was involved in this pregnancy: the fertility clinic.  The doctor acted unethically.  Doctors are prohibited from handing out morphine to anyone and everyone.  Similarly, they *should* be prohibited from handing out eight embryos at a time to women who have six kids already.

I’m wondering if there is a problem with terminology, here. I used clomid and IUI and had a set of twins. This means that I took a pill for the first five days of my cycle to regulate ovulation. I had an ultrasound to see if I was ovulating and they saw one follicle. Then, donor sperm was injected into my uterus. Twins resulted by surprise when theoretically the second follicle was not able to be seen in the ultrasound. When making this decision, after years of unsuccessful attempt to get pregnant and having miscarriages. The risks were explained to me. I was told I would have an increased chance of having twins. Possibly as much as 7%. I was told triplets would be less than one percent. higher order multiples than that and the odds went down to .00005% (I remember that statistic very well. I did NOT want a litter.) The whole thing cost be around $1100.

I’m explaining all of this in such great detaill because people constantly make assumptions and talk about my situation in inaccurate ways. Everybody thinks I did IVF. I did not. NO embryos were implanted. Sperm was injected. My cycle was supervised with ultrasounds, still a surprise twin pregnancy occurred. My costs were low, not in the tens of thousands of dollars. The media gets this screwed up all the time, too. So, I’m not convinced that this woman did IVF or had anything implanted. It is possible, but hard to believe. I think it is more possible that she took fertility drugs and hyperovulated. How supervised her cycle was remains to be seen. We may never know. I have never heard of a doctor implanting more than 2 or 3 embryos. EVER. So, I’m not trusting the media (or even the mother on this. My parents couldn’t even explain to you what I did without mucking the terminology.)

In any case, I get sick of people who choose to do ART getting blamed for the occasional bad outcome. We ALL take risks every time we get pregnant. Every time we have sex, actually. There is a possibility of multiples, there is a possibility of disability or serious disease, there is the possibility of maternal death. All of these outcomes have a higher probability of occurring than having octuplets. We all take risks, we all deal with the consequences of our decisions. Hopefully, no one is saying to us, “You are such a horrible person for deciding do X.”

That said, I would not make the same decisions as this woman did. I do think it sounds a little crazy. However, I’ll defend her right to make those decisions. This is the price of freedom. We can regulate and save society from some of these ill-advised and costly situations, but we would lose our reproductive freedom in the process. The price we pay for the government staying out of our uteri is that we are going to have a few fringe people who make questionably ethical decisions. I much prefer that than the alternative.

I’ll just point out that from an evolutionary perspective, (not to be confused with evo psych), most animals of both genders will want offspring, and will care for them so they can reach adulthood and continue the genetic line. I see no reason why, from an evolutionary standpoint, women would be more compelled to have children than men. Nor do I see any reason why, as social animals who pair-bond, humans wouldn’t share responsibilities in child-rearing. As usual, the ironically non-scientific essentialists have only part of the story.

“One of the rights they have that should be respected is the right to be raised without poverty or neglect.  Frankly, I think the first six kids had a right that was violated by the mother”

That is exactly my concern.  I hate to judge somebody else’s reproductive choices, but I do think that there is a point where having more and more children is inherently damaging to the kids you already have.  I thinik that the Duggars are way over that line and so is this lady.  The fact that she does not have the financial means only makes it worse, but not even a billionaire could adequately parent dozens of children.  You only have so many waking minutes in a day after all, and kids need more from their parents than just food and shelter.

I would never go so far as to put a legal limit on how many kids someone can have, but I can’t help but personally frown upon it.

The tone of the coverage certainly changes when it involves an unmarried woman of color.

There’s definitely something to that.  I was extremely squicked out when the McCaughey septuplets were publicized so heavily, especially given how hard the media leaned on the “and they’re pro-life!” aspect of the story.  And yet I heard very little criticism in the media, just a lot of gushing about how wonderful it was that this Nice White Christian couple had Chosen Life.

Now we have someone who did essentially the same thing, and the media is outraged?  WTF?  Where’s all your gushing about how wonderful it all is now, a-holes?

I have to say that from the first reports on the birth of these octuplets I had a negative reaction (mainly because by necessity these babies were all very premature and could result in a lifetime of medical problems).  I just don’t see high-order births as an objectively good thing.  I also worried that a mother to octuplets would be hard-pressed to get the help she needed to care for these babies.

But when more came out I thought that this woman’s need to have a lot of children seemed pathological—the same way I feel about the Duggars, actually.  I do think in the last decade there has been a huge backlash against feminism and women opting for smaller families. I see the quiverfull movement, the lionization of women who have very large families, and celebrity bump watches as evidence of this backlash.  I think this renewed media narrative that reduces women to their motherhood status is going to result in MORE cases like this as some women realize it is a quick way to become “somebody,” whether it’s a form of neighborhood celebrity or national celebrity.  And I don’t think that is a good thing.

I also do think it raises important questions about medical ethics when it comes to fertility procedures.  I do not advocate any law that restricts a woman’s right to have as many children as wants.  Still, just as you are not likely to find a doctor willing to abort a healthy fetus at 9 months, I think it’s fair to consider what the “best” medical practices are in this situation.

bethynyc:

Just a quick sidebar, when I signed up to be an egg donor in 1993, I went through a battery of physical and mental tests. I took the Minnesota Multiphasic test, had an interview that went deeply into my family health and background, tested for everything under the sun, etc. etc. Plus training on how to shoot myself up with hormones.

This was probably so that the people who were getting your ova would be assured they weren’t getting a “bad seed.” 

It is also probably to try to make sure that you wouldn’t track them down and sue them for custody of your lost baby and/or mental anguish worrying that the ova you gave up grew up in a bad home, or just not in your loving mommy arms.

Note how those both protect the ovum recipient.  Protecting you is just the only way they could do it.

“She may or may not have “wanted another child” but she definitely didn’t have the *right* to have another child, let alone another eight children. “

1. Yes, she did. And does.

2. Another biological-impulse-to-breed person here. Not the same as wanting sex, and maybe it is culturally constructed, but if you’ve never felt it, honestly, how do you know? When it comes to humans, our instincts are hopelessly muddled by our upbringing and experiences. That doesn’t make them any less powerful, or any less ok to act on.

3. I really hate the judgement that came out on this story. This woman did not seek out attention at first; she was anonymous until the press ferreted out her family. If she had been on TV asking for diaper handouts or what have you from the get go, whatever, but she wasn’t.

4. Her mental health, her financial situation, etc. etc.? None of any of our fucking business. If and when she breaks a law, which she has not, then society gets a say. If we don’t like fertility treatments that might result in eight fetuses, let’s discuss that. But what she did? Legal. And her life? Hers to live, bad or good. Including how many kids she has in what circumstances.

Jesus.

Saying that this woman should not have had eight more premature births at one go because she is broke, crazy, living off her bankrupt parents, unemployed and now unemployable etc…. is merely sensible.

I agree.

But there is a big and bright distinction between me saying “You should not” and me saying “You will not”.  I don’t think you’re making that distinction.

To be more specific - how would you stop her if she announced she was going to do it again?

Aprox. when did the phrase “biological clock” come into the vernacular? I’d be interested to know if my professor was on to something.
UltraMagnus on 02/02 at 03:53 PM

My impression is that the phrase, if not the concept (in vague form), was a product of the mid-1980s backlash that Susan Faludi wrote about in her book of that name. It was linked up with the “marriage gap” thing or whatever the hell the magazines were calling it—the bogus “study” that claimed that, as Nicole Hollander’s Sylvia (sarcastically, I should note for those poor souls unfamiliar with Hollander) cartoon put it, an unmarried woman over 35 or whatever the alleged age was had “a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than finding a husband.” It was all bull, of course, but the mainstream news magazines made a big serious deal about it.

I was paying attention both in general, and specifically because I had finally managed to attract a girlfriend, and we talked about this crap. (When I got around to seeing Fatal Attraction, at a campus showing at Caltech, we mocked it over the phone—she generally lived in Chicago, not LA).

The phrase “biological clock” was definitely in the air a lot amidst all these shenanigans. That doesn’t exactly prove no one ever said it before, but I certainly hadn’t heard it.

I think the basic idea was kind of deeply embedded in the whole “woman’s place is in the home” ideology and it took a while for the reactionaries to get their act together—that’s part of Faludi’s theme too, that generally women do make real progress in some eras, and that then it doesn’t just slow down—society gets into an active, orchestrated conspiracy to roll them back again, possibly farther back than before the previous progressive phase began.

That kind of thing is hard to quantify of course—society is generally changing so much and so fast and in new ways, and it is hard to judge how much a particular disadvantage is a restoration (perhaps in excess) of previous reaction and how much it is an unfortunate byproduct of some new change unforeseen by anyone.

What isn’t hard to quantify is the backlash attempts—they are massive and very easy to identify.

Thus, even if some evil is magnified unexpectedly by new conditions or quite new, I will blame the backlash, because presumably people who weren’t under attack might have negotiated better deals for themselves across the board without having to contend with that malice.

Also, don’t forget the capability of many males to extend living the late teens/early 20’s lifestyle well into their 60’s.

While I know anecdote != data, I have to say that just about every man I know in the 29-40 range has definitely gone through a period of settling down and figuring their shit out.  It doesn’t always manifest in the urge to reproduce, probably because men don’t have to make major decisions about family to fit a finite window of fertility.  But in my totally casual and unprofessional opinion, there is something that happens to people of both genders around the 30’s that culminates in the sort of thing that often manifests in women as the TICKTICKTICK.

JoAnne: Um…what?

I chose to be an egg donor for many and varied reasons. I knew going into it that I was NOT THE MOMMY! I have absolutely no desire to track down the results.

I chose to be an anonymous donor. I was well compensated for my time and effort, and I helped a couple that wanted a child enough to go through the arduous process of receiving donor eggs.

It was not something that I did lightly, and it certainly was not something that the recipients went into lightly. Please don’t demean that with your sarcasm.

Not only is the choice to have eight babies at one time damaging to the six existing children, but it’s a threat to the well-being of the eight babies!  What’s more “pro-life:” selectively aborting, or purposely gestating eight fetuses in one pregnancy, thus practically ensuring that some or all babies have developmental problems or much worse?

Bethynyc - I briefly looked into egg donation once upon a time (still think about it occasionally, in fact), and it seemed to me that they wanted to be damn sure that the women donating eggs understood that they were NOT THE MOMMY!, and everything else you said.  So it may be that this is one of the reasons there’s psychological testing surrounding egg donation that might not exist for women undergoing fertility treatment to give birth to a child of their own.

I think this is what JoAnne might have been trying to say?

I don’t doubt that some—possibly many—women have a biological urge to have a child.  But if that’s the case, then a similar proportion of men should have the same urge, because to claim that only the female of a species would have an urge to reproduce but the males would not is ridiculous on its face.

That’s where the “society vs. biology” part comes in.  Since men in this society are not supposed to want to be “tied down” with kids, that urge gets manifested differently than it does in women, who are permitted to express that urge openly.

1. Yes, she did. And does.

This is too simple an answer when medical intervention was necessary for her to get pregnant in the first place.  Medical ethics limit what procedures/treatments we have access to in many other areas without infringing our right to bodily autonomy.  It’s a legitimate criticism and conversation.

Given it is in the news, we do get to have an OPINION about it; indeed, stories like these are how most people form their beliefs on any number of topics.  And you can disagree with us having an OPINION about it.  What we don’t have a right to do is to interfere with her right to make her own decisions. Luckily, I haven’t seen a single person on this thread suggesting that this should be illegal. 

And I’m sure if we go back through all your posts we will find that you have also, on occasion, expressed an opinion on somebody’s life choices that weren’t, strictly speaking, any of your fucking business either.  I also suspect nobody flogged you for it even if it was judgmental.

Come to think of it, animal/baby hoarding is it’s own uncanny valley.  Having 4 or 5 dogs/babies is viewed as perhaps eccentric but acceptable to most people.  A few more than that and people get uncomfortable.  More than that, and people are simply revolted.

It is, in part, our business because we’re also consumers of medicine. I’d be greatly surprised if she wasn’t part of a million case studies, as was Terry Schiavo’s situation. Asking ourselves what we’d want, how we’d respond, do you think guidelines should be in place, etc. is important as a society. I don’t consider psychological screening to be power-tripping, hell, I think if we did it routinely in many other arenas hopefully more people would have help! We don’t have the right to make any doctors do any procedure however we want. Tubal ligations and vasectomies are rarely performed under 35, especially if there are no children or a serious genetic flaw in the family. Just because someone may really REALLY want it doesn’t mean there HAS to be a doctor to provide a service like IVF, something someone can live without and controversially may live better without.

bethynyc, I’m sorry you read sarcasm from me, because I didn’t intend it as such.  I should have said “the egg donor” rather than “you” because I’m not saying you personally wanted to track down the results.  In fact, they allowed you into the program at least in part because you were unlikely to do so.

I’m questioning the idea that they checked up on you so much as an egg donor because they cared about you, personally.  The nurses and doctors who talked to you?  They’re not the institution.  The institution hires people who are good at caring.  They know where to apply the people skills.

An egg donor coming back to claim the child is the super scary nightmare that the egg donor machinery wants to avoid their paying customers ever having to face, and will go to pains to convince them it won’t happen.  The idea is that a woman who gives up an egg could later become infertile, or become mentally unsound, or both, and then WANT THAT BABY BACK. It happens with adoptive children.  They want to make sure it doesn’t happen with egg donors.

Of course they also want to minimize “defective” babies, hence they want to make sure you aren’t from a family of schizophrenics, drug addicts, or cancer patients.

I’m saying that the testing they did was done at least as much to protect the prospective host family, and the clinic, as it was to make sure you as the egg donor were able to donate and not be physically or emotionally hurt. 

You and the recipients went to a lot of trouble.  The recipients spent time, paid money, went through medical procedures, and got a baby, a source of joy in their lives.  You spent time, went through medical procedures, got some of that money and sincerely felt good for helping.  But don’t forget.  Money is a part of it.

Maybe your recipients would have taken your egg if you had a schizophrenic uncle.  Maybe the recipients would have taken your egg if you seemed a little compulsive or needy.  But a lot wouldn’t, so the clinic will rule out people with red flags like that.

Yes, any reputable ART clinic does a psych profile of incoming patients, long before anyone gets anywhere near a needle. On the one hand, the questions are really kinda frightening because when reading them you get a sense of how crazy you would have to be to fail the screening. But on the other hand it’s pretty clear that there is a significant population of would-be clients who do fail the screening. And this woman would likely have done so (albeit if she worked in a clinic she would have known what the “right” answers were).

Within the infertility community, there’s a pretty clear concensus that people who deliberately (or even just recklessly and in denial) go for high-order multiples are dangerously irresponsible and that doctors who enable them should be debrided. Unfortunate that that notion hasn’t gotten to the rest of the world. I think that it’s good to take the focus off the mother in this case, even if she is apparently crazy—both because she’s no crazier than the Duggars and their thousands of messianic-complex copycats—and because when it comes to ART that’s irrelevant. She could be speaking in tongues or covered in catspit or the sanest human being in the universe, and no sensible physician would have implanted even the arithmetically-minimal four embryos, much less the likely eight. And no anesthesiologist or embryologist should have gone along with the travesty.

(And I’m not buying the “shady clinic somewhere outside the US” story at first glance either—reproductive endocrinologists everywhere can read and do basic math, and bad word-of-mouth about multiples is even more likely to clobber a place that relies on foreign patients.)

Tenya, I live in fear of people like you who think it’s sensible to restrict tubal ligation or vasectomy in people under 35.  It’s just none of your damn business.

I think there is an urge to breed, but I don’t think it manifests in every woman.  It isn’t required, either, and I think many men feel it strongly too.

Would the human race be here or have gotten to this state if this wasn’t true?  Not likely.  HOWEVER (and that’s a BIG HOWEVER) it isn’t necessary for EVERY person to get broody in order to carry on the species - it just takes a few, actually.  In fact, the experience of large families demonstrates that having a few non-breeding adults around isn’t a bad idea.

Joane, what the fuck are you talking about?  Can’t you read -Tenya wasn’t stating her opinion but describing reality.  Go check your comprehension scores before you get into this again.  You are reading all sorts of shit into everything, but not really reading anything.

animal/baby hoarding is it’s own uncanny valley.  Having 4 or 5 dogs/babies is viewed as perhaps eccentric but acceptable to most people.  A few more than that and people get uncomfortable.  More than that, and people are simply revolted.

I’m going to see if I can get this put on a t-shirt.

“It is, in part, our business because we’re also consumers of medicine. I’d be greatly surprised if she wasn’t part of a million case studies, as was Terry Schiavo’s situation. Asking ourselves what we’d want, how we’d respond, do you think guidelines should be in place, etc. is important as a society.”

It is, IF we have been invited into this conversation about this woman’s mental health and fitness for motherhood. We were not. We’re only discussing this because the hospital talked about it and the press leaped on it. The woman did not come to us and say “hey what do ya’ll think about my decision?”

It’s perfectly possible to discuss limits on assisted fertility options without becoming armchair psychologists for a person we never met and know very little about.  And I would also say, that’s a much more productive discussion. If that’s what you’re talking about, then yeah, though I think there’s not been much about that on this thread, but an awful lot of “bitch crazy!” and “that’s not natural!” remarks. Along with “she’s costing us money!” which is far-fetched, considering that very few women are doing what she is. I’m sure smokers are costing you more. Or people getting sports injuries, which hey, are also voluntary. Where’s the outrage about that? Damn weekend warriors, busting their asses and going to the emergency room, raising all our insurance rates!

/rant

Anyhoo, I think Melissa at Shakesville has a more eloquent take: http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/02/my-beeswax-none-of.html

Is this correct?

No.

It makes sense that men would not experience a physical urge to breed the way that some women do just because the breeding does not happen in their body.  I experience and urge not so much to have offspring but to BE PREGNANT which men would obviously not experience.  I would expect the same instinct in a man to manifest as something less similar to a physical craving.

That everyone should be free from coercion regarding reproductive choices is an essential part of being pro-choice and for reproductive justice.

That everyone should be immune from judgement and disapproval is an impossible and silly fantasy.

The important thing to remember is not to make a blind jump (as anti-choicers and the mentally immature are likely to do) from “I think x is a bad idea and I disapprove of it” to “x should be illegal and the government should stop everybody from doing it.”

I’ll just point out that from an evolutionary perspective, (not to be confused with evo psych), most animals of both genders will want offspring, and will care for them so they can reach adulthood and continue the genetic line. I see no reason why, from an evolutionary standpoint, women would be more compelled to have children than men. Nor do I see any reason why, as social animals who pair-bond, humans wouldn’t share responsibilities in child-rearing. As usual, the ironically non-scientific essentialists have only part of the story.

Actually, this is untrue, and I’ve always wondered why there isn’t more research going into why human fathers are so weird.

In *most* mammal species, males have *nothing* to do with infants. Nothing. They don’t protect them (they may protect females in their territory, but the females protect the infants), they don’t hunt food for them, they don’t teach them jack, and in fact many males are actively dangerous to infants, unless they have had sex with the mother. (In some species, females who have never mated are *also* dangerous to infants, but this isn’t true of primates.)

This is one of the reasons why the evopsych-choad explanation of why women are biologically compelled to keep their legs together except for That One Special Guy is bullshit; in primate species, the more males the female sleeps with, the more males will leave her babies alone. Males in primate species don’t appear to have any compulsion to actually care for or involve themselves with babies, but they *do* give presents to females they’ve copulated with and they do not *threaten* her babies, as males who have not copulated with the female might. (It’s routine for gorilla males, who keep harems where one alpha male drives off all the other males in a territory, to kill the infants of all the females in the territory after they take over, because this causes the females to go into heat sooner. Also, while not all langur males do this, a high enough proportion do that females actively seek to protect infants from male langurs.) More sexytimes with more guys may not actually get a woman any more pregnant than she was already going to get, but in primates it *does* increase the odds that her infant will live to adulthood, so there’s strong evolutionary evidence that in fact, women evolved to want to get it on with multiple guys just as much as men evolved to want multiple women.

So why do human fathers invest so much attention in their offspring? It’s almost like they’re birds. Except penguin dads invest a lot *more* attention in their offspring than most human males. But it’s undeniable that human males love babies. Why? Very, very few mammalian males like babies or have anything to do with them. Why this unusual feature of human males, and does it have anything to do with the rise of patriarchy? Because I have a theory that human males evolved to invest in their own offspring precisely because human offspring need *so* much care, but that the mechanism by which evolution wired them to do this was based on the female template, and there are checks in the female template to keep females from investing *too* much in unrelated children. (Yes, we all know that adoptive mothers are loving and caring and often much better than the bio moms the kids would have had otherwise, but most women don’t *want* to adopt, and this is why.) Females, of course, know who their children are. Males don’t. So did the male urge to dominate females and control who they reproduce with—which doesn’t come from the gorilla pattern, because males are only as much bigger than females in humans as in chimps or bonobos, whereas most harem-keeping mammals are *much* bigger than their females—actually come from the male *desire* to care for children who are their own?

Evopsych choads have been telling us for years that men evolved to care about whose child a woman is having because they don’t want to invest in a child that isn’t theirs, but most mammalian males don’t invest in children at all, so this totally begs the question. And in hunter gatherers, males don’t specifically provide for specific children; they provide protection and meat to the entire tribe, including the children, but they don’t really involve themselves in child care most of the time; the females of a tribe work together to care for each other’s children and provide 80% of the tribe’s food, so a child is better served by a mother with many sisters and a living mother herself than a mother who has recruited a man’s help. I wonder if the urge to provide for children, and thus the “need” to control who the child’s mother reproduced with, comes from male humans having female maternal desires wired into them and not having the same biological ability to tell which child is theirs.

I can attest to the “large families burn the older daughters” phenomenon.  I have friends and family in some larger broods; I do not know a single oldest female child of a family larger than six children who was not used and tossed out like kleenex. 

Until they manage to get free for a period of time and have a second childhood, they are extremely unhappy people.

GumbyAnne:  The tricky bit is when we have to decide if X is going to be paid for with public funds.  I see a strong case for 1-2 kids to be paid for with IVF.  Someone’s seventh?  Not so much.

“Tubal ligations and vasectomies are rarely performed under 35, especially if there are no children or a serious genetic flaw in the family.”

I fail to see how this in particular is a net gain for we, the collective “consumers of medicine.” Someone who adamantly doesn’t want kids not accidentally getting (someone else) pregnant is a good thing.  A woman being able to skip two decades of pharmaceuticals to avoid a pregnancy she doesn’t want is a relief to the system.

ms. kate:

Joane, what the fuck are you talking about?  Can’t you read -Tenya wasn’t stating her opinion but describing reality.  Go check your comprehension scores before you get into this again.  You are reading all sorts of shit into everything, but not really reading anything.

Oh, how I love when people think referring to “comprehension scores” is a witty retort.  That one burned itself out in 1996.

tenya seems to think it’s a bonzer idea to use psychological screening to decide who gets what treatments.  The key here is that we’re not talking about getting yet another facelift or breast reconstruction surgery.  We’re talking about reproductive health.  So she’s talking about deciding who gets to have a baby, or who gets to have contraception, or who gets to have abortion.

I’m not an absolutist on most things, but I am here.  What sounds “reasonable” to you isn’t to me.  I have the right to bodily self-determination.  I don’t want my right to an abortion, or to have a baby, or to any form of birth control I choose, in the hands of some psychological test* or some doctor with a god/dess complex. 

What tenya’s saying leads to pharmacists deciding their patients don’t need BC pills.  Maybe she doesn’t go that far personally, but I’m not willing to give even an inch on this, because it’s no one’s right but my own to decide how “appropriate” my reproductive health choices are. 

I’m surprised how many people *here* are giving an inch, or more.  Someone not clear on the meaning of Reproductive Choice?

*You do know psychological tests are often based not on absolute scientific standards but largely instead on more sociological concepts like “docile cooperative mom person” or “doesn’t fit in with society,” right?

“In *most* mammal species, males have *nothing* to do with infants.”

It can vary with environment, though.  Like in the wild, females of most otter species will work overtime to keep males the hell away from their cubs, to keep males from finding their natal holts, and so forth.  In captivity, females of those same species will allow males to bring the pups food and help care for them, sometimes to the point of functioning as what we’d call a nuclear family.

I think I put a finger on why this public commentary, and the tone of it, is so galling to me personally. Particularly here at Pandagon, a progressive, feminist-friendly blog.

Would the same woman be held up to such scrutiny, by US, the left, if she’d had multiple abortions? If she’d had fourteen (or some other, higher/lower number that we deemed indelicate/irresponsible) sex partners?

Her fourteen babies, these eight latest ones, are the flip side of choice. Capital C. Choice isn’t just this thing or that thing- it’s all potential options.

We’re better than this. I want us to be better than this, at any rate.

I suggest that babies—children in general—can be interesting and fun to have around. And one strong reason why someone might not want to have children is that, because children are people too, but lacking in knowledge, experience, and strength, they are a terrible responsibility as well—because we care what happens to other people.

I don’t know if we can disentangle “instinctive” drives from the rational desirability of having children around and I don’t much care to try.

I think this may be a clue why, as you say, Alara, human men are so “weird” relative to the typical run of male mammals, particularly our own closest relatives. When intelligence came into the picture the rules changed.

What I would seek to disentangle are cultural imperatives that turn out to be obviously dysfunctional—the way patriarchy teaches men to treat “their” children as possessions for instance. Or women being strongarmed into having children when they actually don’t want to. But that can be worked out case by case among people of good will and decent sympathy.

The problem is, patriarchy (which I think is more helpfully described as “dominator society,” but obviously I’ve had little luck explaining that) systematically cultivates bad will and self-delusion and calls it “decency.”

Thus at this point we can use our intelligence to fool ourselves into being worse than our relatively mindless ancestors! But we can also do better.

All I know is, I love it when my nearly-one-year old niece visits; when she is around I typically don’t pay much attention to anything else.

On the other hand, I might think that someone who’d had 14 abortions was kind of stupid, pathological, or fucked up.  “Freedom of choice” doesn’t mean “freedom from judgment” or “the right to be protected from other people’s dislike of your choices”. 

Not to mention that abortions don’t result in another human being in the world who needs to be fed, clothed, sheltered, and cared for.  Which is the main object of my disrespect for the woman in question—who in their right mind would knowingly bring 14 children into the world without any real way to either provide for them or raise them properly?  Those are human beings, people who are likely going to grow up to have miserable lives.  All because, what?  This woman thinks Teh Baybeez are like zomg so cayooote?

Also, if 14 sex partners is in the same league of pathologically damaged as 14 children, I am well and truly fucked…

To be more specific - how would you stop her if she announced she was going to do it again?

In this case - IVF is expensive. Her income is not great, so she’s probably paying for it on credit. Eventually, credit stops and she can’t pay for another round. Further, if she can’t afford to raise all of the kids, the state will end up taking them away from her. She has the right to create, carry, and give birth to 14 kids. She doesn’t have the right to RAISE them if doing so would constitute neglect.

If credit hadn’t been so freely available over the past few decades, this would be a decent mechanism - you can only have as many rounds of IVF as you can afford. But when you can get loans without anything implying that you can pay them back, consequences can be bad.

Oh, and according to the article, Nadya was after 12 kids, so she only overshot by 2. Sure, she’d have spaced them out more, but it’s not like 7 was going to be it.

As I understood it, TLs are currently restricted but vasectomies aren’t. Because paying child support is much more impactful to your life than being pregnant.

pepito, you know for a fact she did this on credit?  If she could do so after having six separate IVFs, then I guess her credit was pretty good.  So she can probably pay that back, too.  She wasn’t the one who went through bankruptcy, it was her parents.

If she worked at the clinic then maybe they gave her a family (ha) rate.

You say she wanted to have twelve kids.  But she didn’t want six more all at once—she wanted to have them individually.  She already knows what it’s like to have the six she gave birth to before now, too, so it’s not a case of thinking the kittens are cute until you have to feed them and vet them and clean the litter box.

And I don’t believe that paying child support is more impactful than being pregnant.  I guess it might be easy to make that mistake if you didn’t have a uterus.  Or empathy.

This: “All because, what?  This woman thinks Teh Baybeez are like zomg so cayooote?” is what I mean by the tone of this scrutiny.

How on earth can we know why she wanted so many babies? Why on earth are WE better judges than her, right there in her own life?

Of course we’re all allowed to judge. Of course we form opinions about absolutely everything. But I think we need to look carefully at who we’re judging, and about what, and where our opinions come from. This is a woman, being judged on her reproductive choice. If she’s a symbol of something larger in our society, then the reasons being used to indict her are also symbols of how we view women, how we view their autonomy, what we feel when a woman makes a choice that we don’t agree with.

Has anyone noticed the eerie similarity between their own take on this mother and the wingnut dog whistles about welfare moms and their number/s of children? Between the “MY taxes are paying for HER indulgence” comments here and Right’s anti-immigrant rationale?

I don’t know. Not trying to concern troll or derail the discussion. I just want us to look a little harder at our own responses.

JoAnne, you come in here crying “racist plot” when most people would not consider Ms. Suleman to be other than white, and when the go to person on Octuplets for the media types is an African immigrant woman who is raising seven healthy children and has received vastly less nasty media than the white McCaughey family did, likely do to their income.

Then you attack someone who merely pointed out something that is TOTALLY FUCKING OBVIOUS to anyone who has tried to get sterilization done before age 35, as if it was a good idea rather than a reality many of us have encountered.

You need to listen more and blather less about your special opinions.  Seriously, what is your obsession here?

What mir said.

Why on earth are WE better judges than her, right there in her own life?

I think there are two questions that involve the public and need to be investigated:

1) Who inserted so many embryos when such practice is immensely against established medical practice, and what professional consequences should they receive.

2) How can it be made possible for this woman to raise these children given her lack of income and the clear distress of her parents? How can the lacking resource situation be addressed for the best interest of all of her children?  What psychological support is needed here as well (not just because of the hoarding aspect, but because it is a very difficult task)?  Even though Ms. Suleman has a degree in child development, that doesn’t mean she (or anybody really) can take care of that many infants and older kids too.

Ms Kate, wow, I didn’t cry “racist plot.”  I said that her race is a factor.  Just because you think Arabs are White and therefore her large family doesn’t imply some kind of threat to Red State America (really?  REALLY?) doesn’t mean everyone agrees with you.

That people under 35 have great difficulty getting sterilized wasn’t presented as just a fact.  It was presented as an example of the way that society has a right to restrict medical care as in reproductive health.  I didn’t hear tenya saying “of course this is wrong.”  I’ll wait for tenya to clarify this point, but since tenya seems to think some limits are right, I can easily say that I disagree with those limits.

I don’t think you know what I need.  I certainly don’t think you or tenya should have any say in what I need in terms of reproductive choices. 

Which is the entire bloody point.

Has anyone noticed the eerie similarity between their own take on this mother and the wingnut dog whistles about welfare moms and their number/s of children? Between the “MY taxes are paying for HER indulgence” comments here and Right’s anti-immigrant rationale?

I seem to remember a great deal of this annoyance directed at the McCaughey family, whose family income came from Dad working a low-level car dealer job.  Yet it was coming mostly from the left as they themselves are wingnuts.

I don’t remember anything of the sort directed towards the much wealthier Nkem Chukwu, other than the obvious hand-wringing about “how did this happen”.  Both cases resulted in advances in practice to prevent extreme multiple births - such as monitoring of the sort of fertility treatments that Chukwu and McCaughey received to prevent excessive numbers of folicles from releasing eggs, and limiting the number of embryos placed in IVF treatments.

I don’t think you understand the reality of living in the US JoAnne.  I really don’t.

Oh, and when my insurance pays for IVF under state law, but I had to leave the hospital about 14 hours after my son was born after an 18 hour labor (and a friend got a heinous infection after being forced out two days after a 35 hour labor and cesaerian birth) so insurance companies could contain costs, I damn well have something to say about appropriate expenditures and use of COMMON resources.

>Tenya, I live in fear of people like you who think it’s sensible to restrict tubal ligation or vasectomy in >people under 35.  It’s just none of your damn business.

I was not referring to societal restriction, actually, I was referring to individual health care providers being obliged to perform on demand. I think it is a doctor or nurse practitioner’s damn business what procedures they will perform, and yes, I was presenting as an example of current medical ethical issue that there are not many doctors who will do a tubal/vasectomy under 35, without children or a serious genetic condition. If you want to argue that that is wrong, that’s fine, that is how many feel.

However, I don’t think a provider should be obliged to perform something they find dangerous or unethical. Even if someone REALLY REALLY wants it, especially if their health will not be impacted without it. Like IVF, they’re not going to die because someone refused to implant 8 embryoes. Like a tubal or vasectomy. This is why medical ethics is important, and something to be discussed if a patient and their physician differ. Nothing is cut and dried, I met a charming doctor in a Catholic low-cost clinic who quietly murmured to a 25-year-old to set up an appointment for her tubal at his secular office. Other physicians will not perform them under any circumstances. Thus why it is difficult but not illegal or impossible.

Ms Kate, I suppose using the words “bonzer” and “bloody” had you confused.  I am well aware of the reality of living in the US, having done it all my life.

I agree it’s wrong to throw someone out of the hospital when they’re not physically ready, just to save the insurance sompany money.  The solution to that isn’t restricting “the wrong people” from getting IVF, it’s not throwing people out of the hospital when they’re not physically ready.

I wasn’t talking about insurance restrictions, though they certainly should be neutral on who gets what; that’s probably part of the basis of equal IVF accessibility being state law, because otherwise it would be divvied up on a basis like “are you married and in a good relationship.”  Birth control should be just as equally accessible; I don’t know if it is in your state, if it’s not, then that’s wrong.

But let’s face it.  Childbearing is a “normal” thing for people to want to do.  It is a function that everyone participates in as a child, if not as an adult.  Making it accessible and safe and supported for everyone is a primary role of society.  Putting anyone in a gatekeeper role for reproductive services is wrong.  Pro-reproduction or anti-reproduction.  They are sides of the same coin.

You may not agree, but that’s my belief.  My statements flow from that belief.

You can assume that covering IVF cost you and your friend your health, but you’re setting up a false dilemma, that we can have only one.  IVF for those horrible overbreeders who don’t have the money to support themselves (is she on welfare now?), or something beyond subminimal health care for Ms Kate and her friend.  I don’t think that’s accurate.

And not everyone has insurance, so why aren’t you complaining about that?  Or the starving children in Zimbabwe and genocide in Darfur? 

The point is, it’s her body.  Her choice.  We can talk about what we think she should do, but when we start talking about what she is allowed to do?  Wrong.  Bzzt.

And I don’t believe that paying child support is more impactful than being pregnant.  I guess it might be easy to make that mistake if you didn’t have a uterus.  Or empathy.

Snark detector for JoAnne!

Between the “MY taxes are paying for HER indulgence” comments here and Right’s anti-immigrant rationale?

It’s not even about that. Those kids are either growing up in poverty, or will have to go through lengthy and stressful foster/adoption processes. I see myself as “anti-poverty”.

She has the right to host whatever she wants in her uterus. That doesn’t mean she has the right to raise a single child. And having children that you aren’t going to be able to raise is irresponsible, whether you do it by IVF or by shagging. IVF feels worse because it’s working REALLY HARD to create people that you’re utterly unable to support.

And yes, because there is obviously going to be a follow-up, I think that if someone is uncomfortable dispensing BC, performing abortions, or whatever, they shouldn’t work where that is going to be an issue. I work in psych, I’ve never had to perform an abortion, although it isn’t something outside of my comfort level. If someone wants to do prenatal care and never bring up abortion, work in Uber-Catholic-Mega-Hospital, same for pharmacists that never want to dispense birth control. I think the onus should be on practitioners to be up-front and obliging to their customers [ie, referrals], instead of using the only pharmacy counter in a rural area as their personal soapbox to punish sluts.

Wow, JoAnne, you took that it would be good thing for psychological screenings to be done in more places out into left field. I think that they should be routine for yearly family care physicals, for adolescents at least twice a year in highschool, for OB/GYN care, and just about anything. I think it makes a huge difference in clinical picture for a variety of settings. And I would question the wisdom of doing a large implantation of embryos if someone’s stressors with 6 children under 8-years-old was making them suicidal, to give an obvious reason why it would be a good idea.

To add to the “would you object if someone had fourteen abortions??” question, probably not individually, I’m not going to lobby for legislation to restrict it to 13 or bar their way to the clinic. I would wonder why they didn’t choose having a long-term solution such as the Implanon like me or an IUD, but it also doesn’t make that much difference to me. I think the issues surrounding these octuplets conception is interesting in terms of the case study perspective I mentioned earlier - such as, what is the rationale behind a limitation to IVF services in consideration of number of prior children, income, circumstances, multiple implantation, etc. and that’s what we’re doing here. We’re also bringing up topics in relation to perception of race in large families in the media and in older and eldest daughters in large families.
I wouldn’t choose her life and choices, though.

The key here is that we’re not talking about getting yet another facelift or breast reconstruction surgery.  We’re talking about reproductive health.  So she’s talking about deciding who gets to have a baby, or who gets to have contraception, or who gets to have abortion.

Okay, this distinction makes no sense.  Either you believe in bodily autonomy—in which case you should be defending people who want to have as many facelifts or boob jobs as they want—or you think that people should only have autonomy over certain parts of their body.  Which is it?

Would the same woman be held up to such scrutiny, by US, the left, if she’d had multiple abortions? If she’d had fourteen (or some other, higher/lower number that we deemed indelicate/irresponsible) sex partners?

If we were hearing about her 14 abortions, I would be asking a lot of questions. Why does she keep having these abortions? What is her access to reliable forms of birth control/contraception? Is this woman’s situation indicative of structural problems in our society (poverty, privatized insurance, etc.)? Are there underlying issues (domestic violence situation in which she is prevented from using contraception, for instance)?

And if it turned out that she was just cavalier about having sex with no contraception and didn’t find abortion a big deal, I might think there was something pathological about it. And if she needed it, I would escort her to the clinic for her abortion, because while I may judge her choices to be irresponsible I do fully support her legal right to have as many abortions as she needs/wants. 

This is where I part ways with Melissa McEwan; being fully pro-choice does not mean I am never allowed to express my opinion or ask questions about another person’s choices, especially if they fall into a larger social narrative that needs to be discussed. Being fully pro-choice means that I understand that my opinion does not count when it comes to another woman’s choice, that I will not support attempts to legislate a third party interfering in a woman’s reproductive choices, and that I will support any woman regardless of my judgment about her choices.

But ultimately, my reaction to 14 abortions would be different than my reaction to 14 live births because now there are 14 other people involved in the situation that weren’t involved in the hypothetical 14 abortions. In addition, 14 abortions are far less trauma on a single body than 6 pregnancies that resulted in 14 babies. YMMV.

That said, a right to bodily autonomy still doesn’t entitle someone to unlimited IVF treatments, especially when those treatments go against best practices for the individual patient.  There is no way that transferring 8 embryos to this patient was considered in HER best interests.  In this case a psychological assessment probably was in order before proceeding with more rounds of IVF because the situation does not sound healthy (assuming the media reports are reasonable accurate, which is always a risky proposition).

Which is it?

Ah, there are two kinds of people: people who divide the world into two kinds of people, and people who don’t… but you’re right that it’s problematic to make a distinction here. Absolute bodily autonomy stops when medical ethics kick in.

tenya:

I think the onus should be on practitioners to be up-front and obliging to their customers [ie, referrals], instead of using the only pharmacy counter in a rural area as their personal soapbox to punish sluts.

So how big a city do you have to work in to be allowed to not do abortions or prescribe or dispense BC pills?  These distinctions sound good, but it’s like saying it’s okay to not serve Blacks if you live in a city where there’s a Black hospital.

Wow, JoAnne, you took that it would be good thing for psychological screenings to be done in more places out into left field. I think that they should be routine for yearly family care physicals, for adolescents at least twice a year in highschool, for OB/GYN care, and just about anything. I think it makes a huge difference in clinical picture for a variety of settings. And I would question the wisdom of doing a large implantation of embryos if someone’s stressors with 6 children under 8-years-old was making them suicidal, to give an obvious reason why it would be a good idea.

I think there are two uses of the word “screening” commingled here.  One is to listen and observe and from that see if it seems someone’s got issues, so you can get them help, or at least offer it.  Another is to use the results of that observation, or a psychological or social inventory of some kind, to determine whether someone’s allowed to get or do something.  I have no problem with the first, done correctly.  I have big problems with the second, because there are so many subjective factors involved.

Mnemosyne:

Me: The key here is that we’re not talking about getting yet another facelift or breast reconstruction surgery.  We’re talking about reproductive health.  So she’s talking about deciding who gets to have a baby, or who gets to have contraception, or who gets to have abortion.

Mnemosyne: Okay, this distinction makes no sense.  Either you believe in bodily autonomy—in which case you should be defending people who want to have as many facelifts or boob jobs as they want—or you think that people should only have autonomy over certain parts of their body.  Which is it?

Actually, I think it is wrong to restrict either boob jobs or IVF treatments.  I don’t think there’s a difference in rights.

But as we are discussing both rights and feelings, I do think there’s a difference in the average person’s investment in either of the two.  Not having another boob job or facelift, the person will statistically probably get over it.  Not having the baby they want, or being forced to have one they don’t want, is much more of an intrusion in their lives.

There are exceptions, of course, on both sides.  I was just hoping to build common ground with what I had, up until now, perceived as a largely pro-choice community.

And pseudonymous in nc, you’re right in that medical ethics do kick in at some point.  I just think it should be farther down the road than someone’s judgment that “you’ve had too many babies already.”

I’m with history_mom on this. Being pro-choice doesn’t mean that I have to bite my tongue while people do idiotic things.

Also, if 14 sex partners is in the same league of pathologically damaged as 14 children, I am well and truly fucked…

Especially if you were having them all at once with the help of some ethically dubious medical intervention…

Some women want to be, for lack of a better term, “professional mothers.” They like children – not just pregnancy and babies, mind you, but actual kids with actual needs. They like the idea of raising human beings they hope will make a positive difference in the world.

These folks can become day-home providers or teachers, but some of them are most content surrounded by their own children (biological or/and adopted). They take pleasure in this, and raise good citizens as a form of pay-back for whatever they’ve taken from society.

That in itself is not a sign of insanity, and nor it is on par with animal-hoarding. Animal hoarders are often guilty of gross neglect because they don’t have the wherewithal to care for all those animals. But people – families, individuals – who run private (but well-policed) animal sanctuaries aren’t “hoarding” anymore than a woman with 14 kids and the ability to care for them is “collecting children.” 

And the smartest and most creative of these parents could probably teach average-sized families a thing or two about reducing environmental impact. Some strategies, such as growing food on-site; buying only in season, locally, and in bulk; participating in a food coop; making necessary items at home; producing some electricity off the grid for sale back to the power company; and reusing pretty much everything (including human waste), are already being employed by large families out of necessity.

It’s disturbing to see that so many posters view children only as a burden, to the point where merely wanting and having a lot of kids is somehow evidence of callousness or mental illness at best and of recklessness or negligence at worst. 

That said, the desire for a giant group of multiples does seem a bit nuts. I haven’t seen any evidence, however, that this particular woman was reaching for octuplets when she underwent fertility treatments.

I agree with history_mom though:

being fully pro-choice does not mean I am never allowed to express my opinion or ask questions about another person’s choices, especially if they fall into a larger social narrative that needs to be discussed. Being fully pro-choice means that I understand that my opinion does not count when it comes to another woman’s choice, that I will not support attempts to legislate a third party interfering in a woman’s reproductive choices, and that I will support any woman regardless of my judgment about her choices.

anymore than a woman with 14 kids and the ability to care for them

It’s this ability to care for them that’s in question here. Caring for 14 kids is not something that one person can do. Caring for 14 kids with no income is even less feasible.

Baby fetishists encourage this kind of shit in people with weak egos by treating families who have multiple births as some kind of heroes, who are paraded all over teevee and given fucktons of free shit.

I find it interesting that there was no thought given to the eight babies resulting from this bit of medical malpractice. As a result of this multiple birth, eight children will now face lives of compromised health because of their mother’s untreated obsession. Her right to satiate some warped sense of motherhood ends when her actions impact the innocent. And the IVF clinic responsible for this macabre experiment should be held financialy responsible for the health care required by these children over the remainder of what is likely to be lives shortened by poor health.

Many of you are missing Amanda’s point: if there was a biological urge to be pregnant or rear children, sex would not need to feel good!

How on earth can we know why she wanted so many babies? Why on earth are WE better judges than her, right there in her own life?

Everybody judges everybody all the time.  As long as we don’t get that confused with the law, I think we’re fine in terms of reproductive rights.  The right to bodily autonomy is not the same as the right to live free of judgment. 

Especially once the media is involved.  If this woman didn’t want people judging her reproductive choices, she shouldn’t have done such a public thing, and she should have kept her friends and family out of the media.  I don’t remember anyone insisting that the pregnant tranny ought to be protected from judgment, ridicule, disapproval, or what have you, to make an interesting counter-example.

My parents had my brother and me in 1981. Despite my dad working in information technology, it wasn’t a breeze for them to support both of us. My concern is for the children, as paternalistic as that may sound. How will a single mother, with no home, raise 14 children, who are all under the age of 8? I suspect she has condemned them all to a life of poverty.

On a couple of other points… Brad and Angelina have the resources and freedom, conferred by wealth, to provide a very comfortable life for not only their children, but perhaps a dozen more. I have no use for the “but they need a father” theory, but in a capitalist society, money raises children.

...in some news stories, it has been reported that the woman was implanted with so many embryos because she did not want them destroyed. Considering this, and her aversion to abortion, shouldn’t she be a poster child for the pro-life movement?

It’s this ability to care for them that’s in question here. Caring for 14 kids is not something that one person can do. Caring for 14 kids with no income is even less feasible.

The answer, therefore, is to monitor her care of those kids and, if necessary, intervene - up to using the legal process to take some of them away and adopt them out.

People tend to use their hands and their brains to take care of their kids.  Trying to control their fallopian tubes just isn’t warranted by this (valid) concern.

And if it turned out that she was just cavalier about having sex with no contraception and didn’t find abortion a big deal, I might think there was something pathological about it. And if she needed it, I would escort her to the clinic for her abortion, because while I may judge her choices to be irresponsible I do fully support her legal right to have as many abortions as she needs/wants.

history_mom—I look at it a slightly different way: if a woman is so irresponsible and cavalier that she has had 14 abortions, then having those abortions is probably the most responsible, level-headed thing that she could do. The “abortion as a form of birth control” hand-wringing doesn’t upset me in the least. Because abortion may not be the “ideal” thing, but it’s a lot better than child abuse and neglect.

I was actually arguing with a friend on Sunday night about the tubal ligation thing. And since I have a bit of experience with this…

When you’re a healthy, college-educated white woman, getting a tubal before you’ve done your duty to the Fatherland is nigh impossible, even in progressive blue-state areas. I went to several GYNs before I was able to find one who was willing to perform a sterilization on my under-30 fallopian tubes. Otherwise, I was hearing shit like “You’re too young.” (OK, I’m 26 years old. You tell me at what age I am an adult and can make decisions about my body and I’ll come back to you then?) “Why don’t you wait until you’re married?” (I’m sorry, did you just imply that my husband needs to make this decision for me?) and “What if you change your mind?” (You honestly think I haven’t considered that? Or know what adoption is?)

For some of us, sterilization is a quality of life thing. Try going several years without sex because you don’t want to get pregnant and hormonal birth control plays havoc with your body, barrier methods are not quite up to your personal requirements for effectiveness in that arena*, and doctors won’t put an IUD in your unused womb.  It really, really sucks.

*not to say people shouldn’t use condoms or that they aren’t effective. But I think most of us have an “acceptable level of risk” that is a separate computation for disease than it is for pregnancy.

Having four or five pets is NOT anywhere in the neighborhood of having seventy eleven kids.  Eleventy seven cats, sure, but several dogs (I have four-http://www.flickr.com/photos/timtimes/sets/72157602271665534/) are quite common around here.  My smaller dogs are comfort animals and my larger dogs are geared more towards personal and property protection, though I snuggle up with the whole lot every night.

The women in this example is guilty of nothing more than mental illness or bad judgement.  The medical establishment is clearly at fault.  With half of America unable to afford basic medical services, it’s rather sad to see such a bizarre misuse of such services.  Plenty of poor women with NO kids would jump at the chance to get the implants she got but can’t afford to do it.  When did this become a subsidized health service?  What other services are the medical profession giving away?

Enjoy.

...in some news stories, it has been reported that the woman was implanted with so many embryos because she did not want them destroyed. Considering this, and her aversion to abortion, shouldn’t she be a poster child for the pro-life movement?

No, because it would reveal the hypocrisy of all the forced-birthers who aren’t willing to do the same thing. Besides, she and her kids are the wrong color.

Tim, glad we agree that having four or five dogs isn’t remotely the same as having 8 or 10 or whatever.

Also, I want to snuggle Roxie in the worst way.

:::sigh:::  I need a dog.

If only anecdotes and obsessing about the details of the private lives of others stimulated the economy…

Hmm one of the things I’ve been pondering is this.  When a patent comes to a doctor many times for an elective plastic surgery, the doctor will at some point say"before I go ahead with this, you will have to be evaluated by a psychologist”  Now plastic surgery is a private issue, and no one should be forced to have it or not.  But having multiple potentially life threatening procedures does put up a red flag.  I think that like a case of people who’ve gone to the plastic surgery well one to many times, this woman should have had to be checked just in case.  It not only covers the doctor’s butt, but makes sure he/she isn’t suffering a mental issue. BTW, we as a society have been free to comment on the rights/stupidity of having lots of plastic surgery.  Remember the person who wanted to look like a cat and had whiskers implanted?  Or the woman who wanted to look like Barbie?  They were in the media a lot back when. 

As for the right of the woman to have lots of babies, sure she has every right.  Does that mean we can comment on it?  Sure we can.  Do people have a right to worry about the children?  Yep we do.  I’m worried for them because the Grandmother has stated that when the woman is out of the hospital she’ll be gone. 

As for the wanting babies thing being a nurture vs nature I don’t know.  I do know I wanted to have kids desperately and couldn’t.  We did adopt, and if we could afford to, we’d adopt again.  I could have gone the IVF route, and maybe ended up with a biological child, but we thought it was more important to have a child then having “our” child.  Not that I’m knocking anyone doing the IVF thing.  We were lucky enough to have options and we chose adoption.

I have to come down on the side of Mir and JoAnne on this. Better that one crazy nut have dozens of kids (and, like Piator says, those kids are looked after, if not by her, then by the government) than hundreds of women have their reproductive choices threatened.

Or, in other words, hard cases make bad laws.

I have a strong urge to NOT be pregnant.  When my period is one, two, three days late, I get nauseous.  It’s nerves, of course, but my preoccupation with avoiding pregnancy is stronger in me than in anyone I know. 

I’ve thought about having kids, tried it on in my mind, but I just can’t get the least bit excited about it.  I am totally ambivalent to kids.  Most people go crazy about children.  It’s a weird obsession we have with kids.  To me, kids are little people; and just like grown-up people, I like some and dislike others.  Most people think I am a bitch because I don’t put kids on a pedestal, but I think doing that limits the child’s ability to grow independent.  Speaking of which…

*total OT warning for below*

My 7 year old niece is over often.  She’s great, and I love her, but she hasn’t been given the chance to try things on her own, to discover what she’s capable of.  Her parents are overly protective.  At 7, she still can’t eat when they aren’t in the room because they are afraid of her choking.  They still brush her hair, pick out her clothes, and tie her shoes.  Over and over she says to me “I’m not allowed to do that.”  Because of this, she’s afraid to try anything new or attempt things on her own for fear of failure.  Last summer, I was determined to fix that.  We went hiking, and she said she wasn’t allowed to go into a creek.  I convinced her to try it out, and before I knew it she was playing tag with my dog, digging in the sand, splashing me, picking up bugs, and making mud pies.  She was exhilarated, exhausted, and absolutely filthy.  Her shoes were ruined, but I bought her another pair and told her that shoes don’t last but she’d always remember how much fun we had. 

I taught her to wash and brush her own hair, told her she could wear whatever she wanted to, taught her to tie her shoes, taught her how to grow vegetables, taught her how to build a camp fire, and convinced her to swim in the deep end.  She learned that messing up wasn’t a big deal and that she was way less helpless than she thought. 

This weekend she and her parents were over, and they found out I had been allowing her to take my miniature Dachshund to go outside to go potty by herself.  The dog area is right next to our apartment building, and I don’t let her do that after dark (we’ve had some burglaries).  They FREAKED OUT.  They were telling her “you never know when someone will grab you and take you away and you’ll never come back!”  She started to cry.  I told them I could hear her from my doorway, and that she just runs down there, lets her potty, and runs back.  I told them if she went anywhere else, I would know. I offered to buy her one of those kid cellphones with programmed buttons.  It didn’t matter.  Now I know why she’s so scared of everything.  Of course I want her to have a healthy sense of safe and unsafe, but I don’t want her to think that evil men are lurking behind every corner and will steal her right under my nose in broad daylight.

Our kids are growing up so sheltered. 

What do you guys think?  Are they being reasonable?  Sorry for the OT :/

Vail - I agree with you completely on almost everything except that the woman has EVERY right to have this many children. My mother was once asked why she didn’t want any more children after she’d had my brother and me (stupid question). She responded “because we can afford two, not three.” I found this an interesting response (not that the question deserved one).

You have some personal responsibility here if you are someone who can not afford your children and do not have the resources to give them what they need. Few people have the resources to provide effectively for 14 children. I know we all like to discuss reproductive rights but I’m just not sure this falls into that conversation in the same was as, say 14 abortions. Largely because, as someone else pointed out, there are now 14 people affected by this idiocy. And I’m sorry, I just don’t have a better word to describe it. If you have six children, you are already in a precarious situation financially. Having any more is idiotic.

And, per Vail’s point, if you become obsessive about plastic surgery, you start to raise eyebrows and they do evaluate your state of mind. Hell, I had a thorough investigation of my background before I was allowed to adopt my DOG!

I completely understand that this is a slippery slope and I do not pretend to have all the answers. IVF is a very artificial way to conceive. This is neither good nor bad but it is the reality of the situation and I sometimes feel like doctors enjoy playing God when it comes to conception but are unwilling to make any ethically-difficult decisions regarding its obvious limitations and challenges. And, while you have the right to take such measures, I start to get a little squirmy when people start to talk about the “rights” of someone taking zero responsibility for being pregnant with eight children…Which, by the way is infinitely riskier (statistically speaking) than selective reduction.

And, I would like the “sterilization before it’s time” question addressed too. Why is it OK to have a thousand kids but not OK and somehow unbalanced to want none? We’re a baby-obsessed society and it’s skewing reality and the assignation of responsibility.

Oh yeah, of course she has every right.  I don’t know how you take away that right without it hurting people who don’t act like this.  But that doesn’t mean she’s not ill, and invoking the Duggars doesn’t change that.  They’re fucked up, too, but fucked up on patriarchy.

Well, that’s too bad, because it very definitely happens. Have you not ever spoken to a woman who strongly, physically—not just intellectually and emotionally—wants to bear children?

Yep!  Read the post.  I said very, very, couldn’t be more clear: That something is culturally induced doesn’t make it less real.

One more time, in case that wasn’t clear: That something is culturally induced doesn’t make it more real.

Our insistence that “real” must mean “genetic” is going to backfire the second, the very second that the human genome project is finished and they discover that not only is there not a biological clock, but homosexuality has an environmental component.  I for one refuse to believe that gay is less real because it has an environmental component.  I hope that you will come alone with me and agree that because something has an environmental component doesn’t mean that it should mean that oppression is suddenly acceptable. 

Amanda. I know it’s a seriously slippery slope. I don’t have the answer either. I’m not convinced it’s a right at this point. It’s no less crazy with the Duggars or any less dangerous and they have myriad other “issues” but they are not enlisting the assistance of a physician to help conceive. I feel like there does need to be SOME assessment of psychological state and, to a degree, financial ability. If you adopt a child, they make all these assessments as part of your home study. Why do biological children have so few safeguards protecting them?

JoAnne, if we have to believe that every single woman out there is perfectly sane and never makes a wrong choice before we have equal rights, we might as well give up now.

I’m honestly asking the following, so please don’t look for ulterior motives behind the question. If generally there is a test of means (material, monetary, financial, whatever you want to call them) before an individual or a couple are allowed to adopt, wouldn’t it make sense to subject someone who wants to have multiple IVFs to a similar test?

I cannot find an essential difference between those situations that justifies a test in the former case yet disqualifies it for the latter, but I admit I may be looling at it the wrong way and I’m open to being enlightened.

Also, JoAnne, respecting someone’s right to do something is a different thing than mindlessly agreeing with what they do.  I support the KKK’s right to say any racist thing they wish.  I do not, however, support it.  See the diff?

Dan said it better than me. I realized after I hit send that my post probably opened a serious can of worms…

Dan and Texas Karen,

Those are really interesting points.  I wonder if the fundamental difference is that when something happens with your body that you don’t require anyone else’s involvement to do, you can’t justify any type of intrusion into what you do?  Having sex and getting pregnant without any medical intervention is just your body doing what it is supposed to do.  But if you need to see a specialist in order to get your body to act a certain way or in order to get the kid you want, you are introducing so many outside components into the equation that ultimately the question of how capable you are to raise a child is raised?

I dunno.  It’s a really interesting thought process.

Precisely, Rachel. I think we’re saying the same thing. I DO want there to be questions when a situation like this arises. I think it’s as much risk mitigation as it is anything else. Why can’t you mitigate risk? After all, if you are adopting, the goal is for a permanent placement of the child…They look at multiple variables to examine your ability to care for said child.

If abortion wasn’t such a dirty word, then the idea of ‘selective abortion’ where the doctor removes all but one or two fetuseses—>the ones left behind are the ones that implanted in the most advantageous positions.

Kate Gosselin has a shit fit when people bring up selective abortion to her.  She goes off on which of her currently alive children should be murdered.  Thing is, had she done it, she NEVER WOULD HAVE KNOWN the others, she couldn’t miss them, and the surviving children would have been healthier from birth and they wouldn’t have to be paraded on TV in order to afford a large enough house and enough food.

I am a small woman.  I know for a fact that I could not carry 4 or more children to term.  Three would probably not happen either.  It would have been irresponsible for me, had I been in that position, to attempt to carry a litter of children.

But you don’t hear about moms who make that responsible choice.  They should be lauded for choosing life—>they chose to bear a well-understood risk of twins to give them all—parents and children—the best opportunity to succeed.

But as long as we slut-shame and demean women and their choices, selective abortion is also considered evil.

We still don’t know exactly what this woman had done or why.  It really doesn’t seem like she intended to have 8, but once she was pregnant with them, she refused to reduce.  Reduction IS best practices, and it should be put out there as the responsible choice far more often.

————-

As for the “uncanny valley” of children?  It’s 3.  Two kids still fit in a normal car Once you have three, people start looking at you funny—>you are either a “two of a kind, tried for the other gender” group, an “oops” group, or religiously compelled to procreate.  The first two groups get along best with one another.

As for pets, I think it depends on the size of the dogs, and whether you live in the city or country, but three is probably the tipping point there, too.  Start going over that, and you’re moving into farm territory.

————-
Ms. Kate, you should have babies in Illinois.  We cover IVF and your 24 hours after normal delivery starts AFTER the delivery.  Best case is to have the baby right after midnight, b/c they start the clock that day, not when you checked in.
—————

This woman has a right to procreate.  Under medical best practices, she probably should not have been given another fertility treatment, even if it worked as intended for a single birth.  I think regulations in a universal healthcare situation should forbid such a procedure.  It isn’t wrong to regulate healthcare, and thereby perhaps restrict reproductive freedom—> you should be entitled to reproductive assistance should you require it, but not for an unlimited amount of children.

But having 8, while crazy, is not insane.  Not unless you want to say women who receive so much pressure from religion and society to forgo abortions and selective reduction as evil are automatically insane.

What does it really say about our society that having octuplets is even remotely considered an intelligent thought vs. a selective reduction?  I wish societal pressure would push hard for selective reductions, and that this period of super-multiples becomes an odd quirk of early reproductive assistance.  But pocket baybees are just too cute, especially if they are white and manage to avoid cerebral palsy or worse complications.

I think that the difference between IVF wrt to the psychological testing aspect is the old mantra of Reality precedes potentiality.

Don’t mean to sound obtuse, Ponygirl, but could you please elaborate a bit? I’m intrigued.

The people advocating tests before a person can be allowed to conceive artificially trust doctors more that I do.

I’m not saying that this woman was sane or insane. I don’t know. My business, none of, as someone linked above.

But good grief, you’d have to be living in a cave to believe that we need, in general, MORE regulatory womb control. Isn’t it bad enough that single women can’t adopt now in some states because, hey, they might be lesbians.

But as we are discussing both rights and feelings, I do think there’s a difference in the average person’s investment in either of the two.  Not having another boob job or facelift, the person will statistically probably get over it.  Not having the baby they want, or being forced to have one they don’t want, is much more of an intrusion in their lives.

So even though you think a person has the same right to have plastic surgery or to have IVF, you have no problem with someone’s access to plastic surgery being restricted because feelings are more important than the actual right?  If someone feels strongly that she needs to be a 40EE, you’re willing to deny her that, but if someone feels strongly that she needs to have octuplets and has 8 embryos implanted, which is much more damaging both to her own body AND to those 8 fetuses than breast implants are, there should be no restrictions at all as long as the woman can pay for the initial implantation?

Because that’s what you’re arguing—that it’s completely normal to want octuplets, so normal that we’re the bad people for questioning it because anyone can see that giving birth to 8 children at the same time is something that the average person would want.

But good grief, you’d have to be living in a cave to believe that we need, in general, MORE regulatory womb control. Isn’t it bad enough that single women can’t adopt now in some states because, hey, they might be lesbians.

But here’s the question:  is any restriction at all on fertility treatments forbidden?  Can a woman demand that the doctor implant 12 embryos and the doctor has to do it because she has the absolute right to control her body?  How about 15?  20?  What if all 20 of them implant? 

What’s the cut-off limit before the doctor is allowed to say, “You know, that’s not medically advisable, so I’m not going to do that,” even though legally you have the absolute right to try and bring those 20 fetuses to term?

That’s what we’re running up against here:  your right to do what you want with your body vs. what is medically possible for you to do to your body.  The boundaries of medicine are being stretched all of the time, but does that automatically mean that patients can demand that all of the fetuses created in IVF be implanted and the doctor must do it no matter what because it’s the patient’s body to do with as she wishes?

Essie. Nope, no cave. And I’m NOT talking about testing for everyone but SOME situations DO warrant a closer look. If you’re playing God, then you damn well better be prepared for there to be some messy consequences. I’m offended that requesting a modicum of common sense here is being viewed as limited or archaic. Yeah, and I want anyone I deem inadequate to be surreptitiously sterilized. Come on, this is NOT what we’re talking about here.

And, as for the single-woman adoption, I’m just not seeing how they are analogous. It’s small minded to make this sort of decision arbitrarily but it is not small minded to want a woman with six children to be asked some candid questions about her own need to procreate again and again and again when she just doesn’t have the means to care for these children.

There was no conversation initiated. I get that it’s not the practice of fertility doctors to do this, but perhaps it needs do be.

As for the “uncanny valley” of children?  It’s 3.  Two kids still fit in a normal car Once you have three, people start looking at you funny—>you are either a “two of a kind, tried for the other gender” group, an “oops” group, or religiously compelled to procreate.  The first two groups get along best with one another.

I think it’s 4, actually. Three is very, very normal.  The most common pattern for three seems to be two close together and then one much later, as if the parents decided after they no longer had any *babies* that, you know what would be really cool, another baby. When I was growing up, my family followed that pattern, two of my mother’s closest friends had families that followed that pattern, and today, one of my daughter’s closest friends is in a family that follows the pattern, my son’s best friend is in a family that follows the pattern… three is really outrageously normal. Also, three *can* all fit into the back seat of a passenger vehicle, but not comfortably. But minivans and SUVs are really, really common.

However, I have four. And people *always* need to point out to me that they must keep me busy! or I’ve got a handful! or something else to express their belief that it would be really hard to have four kids. No one did this when the number was three.

(For the record, I’m none of the above; I’m a blended family. The older two aren’t biologically mine, although i’ve raised them since they were toddlers. I would have maxed out at three had they all had to be biologically mine, and if I had started as late as I did, I would have maxed out at two because my body cannot handle another pregnancy.)

Mnemosyne, no, I think what is being argued is that restricting reproductive rights is opening a can of worms that (mildly) restricting plastic surgery isn’t.

If she is arguing that, then I second that argument. Because I think it’s pretty clear and plain that reproductive rights are more life altering than surgical augmentation of a bodily feature.

Let’s apply a soft case to this point. I had a boyfriend/fiance a month back and we were seriously discussing the topic of conception. I wanted children, and so did he. He has two adult children already and a vasectomy to boot, due to the fact that he’s a bit older than me and he started young. When shopping for IVF and reversals, the LAST thing we were capable of dealing with was handing over bank statements, proving that we make “enough” (according to whom?), proving that we don’t “need” more children (he’s got 2 already - and what if I want 2 or 3 and each one requires IVF?), taking psych tests and determining that, oh, I’m not fit to raise children because, I don’t know, I was raped in college or he’s borderline Asperbergers or any number of other things.

Because that is what it will boil down to. I realize that nobody here thinks that I, personally, should be subjected to that because, hey, Essie is cool but the doctors won’t know that and they won’t care.

This woman is an aberration - one out of thousands, probably millions of women who act responsibly. Let’s not pearl clutch and call for invasive and unnecessary legislation to correct a couple of nutters.

The theory that women have a natural urge to have babies is one that’s got a long and ignoble sexist history, and it was used to explain away women’s sexual urges without men admitting that women and men’s sexual urges are more alike than different.  I see no reason to think recent incarnations and warning stories about the mythological “biological clock” should be treated as anything other than an effort to Other women, to spring men of responsibility for caring equally for children, and to justify denying women equal access to education and employment under the theory that they’re a bundle of hormones that aren’t subject to the same rational thought that men have.

YES. Dear Xenu, I love you Amanda!
:D
I’m sick and tired of being made to feel like I’m “abnormal” even though I’ve never wanted children (along with most of my other friends) since I can remember. It hurts when the people who you consider your more intellectual friends buy into that kind of thinking as well.
All I know is if I for some reason did have a child I would be completely broke, miserable and constantly annoyed. I do NOT need it in my life. It’s fine if other peopel want it- but don’t treat me like I’m defective because I understand how large a job raising a child to be a proper human being is and don’t want that stress and pressure in my life. EVER.
Also don’t treat me, because I don’t have kids, like I don’t know how to even interact with one or that I’m going to slit your child’s throat or something because I’ve stated I don’t want one. I like SOME other people’s kids just fine but I refuse to dumb it down for kids and talk to them like they’re capable of rational thought- just like I would have liked to be talked to when I was a child.

TexasKaren: The reality of adoption is that there is a living breathing baby on the table. The reality of adoption is that it is “selling” a human being to another person. So there are a lot of ethical issues in place to make sure that that sale is done for altruistic reasons and that the person who is purchasing the baby is not going to abuse the baby and that you’re not sending it into a hellhole. And even then I don’t agree with a lot of those ethical questions because you have states that have said that gay couples can’t adopt and that you have to be upper-middleclass in order to adopt or that a child must be adopted by a family of its own race. But there’s no getting around that there is a baby there that needs a good home and however dumb some of the iterations of psychological counseling for adoption are they are at least done with the idea that the baby needs a safe and loving home.

The reality of IVF is that there is a *potentiality* for a baby. The reality is that a woman getting IVF is purchasing a medical procedure which will increase the potentiality for a baby, but the actual generation of the real-life baby(s) will come from her very real, adult, fully-legally-able-to-consent body.

But here’s the thing: the reality of the situation is that doctors will currently deny women all sorts of reproductive treatments because they’re making judgment calls on the woman’s “abilities.” Lesbian? Poor? Dark? No babies for you. White? Educated? Upper-middle class? You shouldn’t have your tubes tied, you’re the sort of person who should have lots and lots of babies!  I am in no hurry to expand that realm of judgment for the sale of a potential baby.

Its always hard to tell if an intense feeling is actually instinctual, or if its “merely” cultural.  Culturally ingrained behavior is not only as strong as instinct, but can be stronger.  Take, as an example, cannibalism.

There are people who might argue that our aversion to cannibalism is instinctive; its certainly quite powerful in many people.  Hardened police officers who have seen the aftermath of countless gruesome murders have been known to become physically ill when seeing the aftermath of cannibalism.  Yet, despite the strength of the aversion in our culture, the fact remains that other cultures exist in which cannibalism is considered perfectly normal.  The mere existence of such cultures is, I think, sufficient evidence for the position that an aversion to cannibalism is cultural, not instinctual.

Which, again, doesn’t mean that cultural (or even individual) feelings aren’t quite real.  I really doubt there is a particular instinct for reproduction, as separate from sex, because it’d be redundant.  In the environment we evolved in, an environment without contraception, the urge to have sex takes care of reproduction.  Evolution is notoriously miserly, it’s quite unlikely that there’d be two separate instincts to cover the same behavior when just one would do.  Which, again, doesn’t mean that a socially ingrained desire for children, pregnancy, and reproduction can’t be intense, and manifest with psychosomatic symptoms.

It does, however, mean that we shouldn’t expect such behavior, or assume that its just part of being female.  Like Amanda said, that’s the patriarchy at work, women aren’t real, they’re just puppets of their hormones/instincts/whatever.

Thanks for the additional clarification, Ponygirl. I’m finding the thread wildly informative and interesting. And your points are well taken.

I get it…I’m still just having a tough time digesting it for some reason…I think because I have such an instantly negative reaction to these stories and it’s difficult for me to intellectualize things. Which, I guess, supports the argument many of you are making about the need for judgment calls to stay out of the mix.

But still…:)

Ms Kate, I suppose using the words “bonzer” and “bloody” had you confused.  I am well aware of the reality of living in the US, having done it all my life.

So you are well aware of your own excessive pretentiousness. Fine then.

It is not a false dichotomy to say that expenditures on artificial fertility means result in cuts in service elsewhere in the system.  There is only so much money to go around and when expenditures not necessary to maintaining health or life are mandated, other expenditures get cut.

IVF is simply not health care.  It does not prolong the life of the recipient, it does not improve anybody’s health.  It is very much like plastic surgery in that regard.

Furthermore, what this woman “chose to do with her own body” is costing the health and possibly life of her parents.  It has impacts on the children she cannot rear.  It is also considered to be malpractice for whomever decided it was a good idea to implant so many embryos because of what is known about the procedure and the consequences.  Thus we have a practictioner who has breached ethics and best practices of their profession, and a women with 14 kids and little social support and no supportive income.  This is where her “rights” stop and society gets to have something to say about it.

I think it’s a mix of cultural and psychological. Around 30, when people’s Bio Clocks are supposed to go off, you’re usually:
- Settling down and stable and starting to think more about your abilities to be a good parent
- Getting older and facing your own mortality—who will take care of you in your old age?
- Thinking about your aging and your own ability to do something.  Usually we want something more if we can’t have it, and you’re anticipating a future in which you can’t have children and attempting to avoid freaking out because suddenly you want them.

In the meantime, you have your culture:
- Every time you turn on the TV you’re bombarded with happy nuclear family messages, which is conditioning you to believe that Family Is The Greatest Gift Of All.
- Constant “You will never understand the joys of parenting until you have children yourself” concern trolling of family and friends.
- Oh yeah, and everyone and your cat are after you with the WHY HAVEN’T YOU HAD CHILDREN YET?! crap.

But here’s the thing: the reality of the situation is that doctors will currently deny women all sorts of reproductive treatments because they’re making judgment calls on the woman’s “abilities.” Lesbian? Poor? Dark? No babies for you. White? Educated? Upper-middle class? You shouldn’t have your tubes tied, you’re the sort of person who should have lots and lots of babies!  I am in no hurry to expand that realm of judgment for the sale of a potential baby.

Quoted for truth.

And this is the essential problem with the “There ought to be a law…” mentality. There is no good reason to use this one very unusual, very specific case to enact a whole bunch of well-intentioned rules which will intrude on the lives and reproductive choices of millions of women.

I really should not need to offer a bank statement to get my fiance’s vasectomy reversed; I should not have to undergo an intensive psych exam to get an IUD.

IVF is simply not health care.

Opinion, not fact, and spoken by a woman who has already “got hers”. So not worth too much when it comes to legislating my womb, in my humble opinion.

I object to the term “biological clock”.  It isn’t like it suddenly goes off at a set time - it seems to be more of a matter of circumstance (e.g. stable relationship).  I do think it may be instinctual for some, and absent in others.  We don’t all have to want to breed to keep the species going - just enough of us have to be so motivated.  As a species, we benefit from diversity - if more people wanna breed during times when there is a dearth of population in one’s area, and fewer want to breed when there are too many, that would be a good species survival strategy, now wouldn’t it?

This is where her “rights” stop and society gets to have something to say about it.

This is, by the way, the siren song of the “abortion is murder” crowd - including many young Democrats.

Essie, explain how IVF improves health?  How does IVF extend life?

Certain other treatments enhance fertility because they fix something that compromises the health of the woman.  I don’t think you can make that claim for IVF.

I have a PhD in public health, so it is more than “the opinion of one woman”.  It is the professional opinion of somebody who looks at health in terms of society and resources, arrived at by looking at rubrics for classification of the value of procedures.  IVF fits into the realm of plastic surgery far more than reproductive health if you look at the health benefits to the recipient and how that money might be better spent within the realm of reproductive and women’s health interventions.

It is also very expensive, at a time when health care costs have spiraled out of control.  Thus mandate of IVF as a covered procedure, when even adoption services are not covered as an alternative, is not justifyable and sucks cash out of a stressed system.  The result is that people with health insurance get their IVF treatments, while other women cannot even afford to purchase the health insurance they need to protect themselves from treatable conditions that make them infertile and compromise their health in other ways (PCOS, which leads to diabetes and infertility, for example), or get treatment for their children.

Sorry, but IVF is expensive and not necessary for health and life - and it is part of the problem of American “entitlement” medicine, where the lucky get caviar and the rest get shit.

This is, by the way, the siren song of the “abortion is murder” crowd - including many young Democrats. . 

So what. Just because one group uses it disingenuously doesn’t mean that society has nothing to say about actual “born” children who are at high risk and practitioners who willfully commit malpractice.

I just saw on the news that this mother is now asking for something like 2 million for her story.  Gah.

I would argue that it’s obvious that people don’t have the same right to IVF that they do to conceive naturally, because the former though not the latter is pretty much always dependent on your ability to pay.

I’m not talking about legislation though, Essie.

I’m talking about being cognizant, as a physician, that your patient’s physical well being may be more important than his/her wants or desires. Getting a vasectomy reversed or an IUD inserted is not, to the best of my knowledge, dangerous. Nor do these procedures cause the social and societal strain as 14 children with a mom who is financially dependent. I’m asking for some questions to be asked. If you are a “hoarder” it won’t take a bank statement or standardized test for people to realize something is very amiss.

And, are the things you mention being required of you for your fiance’s vasectomy reversal part of actual legislation or are they agency or hospital policy? I know it doesn’t make them suck less in your situation…However, if they are policy then, I’m sorry, I’m OK with limiting these nutjobs a bit as part of the policies…

I’m curious about the response to this anecdote…A friend of mine from college was a smoker who wanted to start birth control pills. Her doctor, exceedingly supportive and non-judgmental about everything else, said she could no longer treat my friend if she continued to smoke and insisted on taking birth control pills. She had a patient have a premature stroke due to smoking while on the pill. My friend was furious about having to find a new doctor. Is this really an intrusion on one’s reproductive rights or a doctor who took her Hippocratic oath very seriously? Seems like eight babies with six more back at the ranch might be comparable somehow…I don’t know anymore.

Oh, and I’m genuinely concerned with the MSM’s fascination with these freak shows. I can’t help but wonder if there hasn’t been a slight uptick in the numbers of mega multi births because other nutjobs may want to cash in…And, I HATE Kate Gosselin and find it fascinating that she was a labor and delivery nurse who knew exactly how to manipulate her doctor and this system. Seems she switched doctors when one counseled her not to implant so many embryos simultaneously…

Seems like eight babies with six more back at the ranch might be comparable somehow…I don’t know anymore.

The malpractice in this case isn’t about eight babies even - it is about a practitioner who willfully disregarded guidelines designed to protect the health and life of the patient - and insure optimal success of the procedure.

Eight babies isn’t the usual outcome of this situation.  That she received services at all isn’t the issue.  The issue with the doctor is the implantation of far more embryos than is compatible with patient safety.  It would have been malpractice if my husband’s doctor replaced all of his heart valves, not just the one that didn’t work, too.

TexasKaren,

All surgeries carry potential danger, including vasectomy reversals. That’s just a reality.

As for your anti-smoking doctor, there are also doctors who refuse to give epidurals to women with “slut stamps” *, er, I mean tattoos on their lower backs because, it could hurt the woman or…something. Mostly it’s just an excuse to punish women who get tattoos. Amanda has posted on this before. Hell, your anti-smoking doctor probably refuses to treat people who use tampons because, hey, toxic shock syndrome. Your friend was right to be furious, IMO - the doctor had a responsibility to warn her, but NOT to refuse to treat her.

As for your concern about the MSM’s fascination with the topic: Physician, heal thyself. The MSM is only catering to everyone on this thread who finds this whole topic interesting. If you don’t want it to make money, don’t talk about it here or anywhere else.

Ms. Kate, seriously, I don’t need to hear your opinion that poor people who need IVF in order to experience childbirth can fuck off and die because, if they wanted to have kids they should have been born with the right equipment or at least rich parents. Way to show your privilege.

Essie, I don’t want to hear all about your wonderful privileges that cost so much that they make health insurance impossible for many of the 5-8% of the female population that is not only infertile but at risk of diabetes and premature death from coronary artery disease.

You need to examine your privileges, grrl!

BTW, do you even have any fucking idea how much IVF costs versus PCOS treatment that saves lives?  Oh, sorry, I’m questioning your sacred cow privileges again, bringing up that reality, eh?

Poor women getting IVF.  Oh please.

Wow. OK, Essie. You win. My bet is that you usually win, because you can probably yell louder and are more skilled at hitting below the belt.

And, I still disagree. And, no, the doctor was extremely supportive on all other issues but thanks for the insight…And, while toxic shock is almost completely avoidable with proper tampon use, how one’s body reacts to the pill while smoking is something only time will tell. Moot point, I’ll drop that one…

I’ll have to look for the epidural/tattoo thing, I hadn’t read it. I GET that women are unfairly treated in our healthcare system, I don’t need your stellar insight there. But, I’m still not feeling wrong about any of the points I’ve made because I’m asking for just a bit of caution, not mass hysteria. And if we experience it every-damn-where else than I’ll let it slide when it comes to these twit bags…

And being snide about the my comment about the MSM glorifying this is annoying and pointless…I won’t be going out making many, many babies because I see a newscast or show where those who have “gone before me” seem to be cashing in. I’ll talk about this anywhere I damn well please, thank you…

Bitter much?

if more people wanna breed during times when there is a dearth of population in one’s area, and fewer want to breed when there are too many, that would be a good species survival strategy, now wouldn’t it?

It would be, if selection operated at the group level, which it doesn’t. On the other hand, humans are smart enough to think about our survival as a species, so perhaps that’s what you were talking about. And it’s definitely true we should be thinking along those lines more. Which is part of the reason why I find somebody having 14 children to be so heinous.

the doctor had a responsibility to warn her, but NOT to refuse to treat her.

I’m not really sure this is true. Some doctors have a greater tolerance for risk than others. There are doctors that love to do experimental and risky surgeries if they get their patients’ consent after telling them about the risks. These doctors get sued a lot.

The doctor-patient relationship is like a lawyer-client relationship. The lawyer is required to serve his client to the best of his ability, but if the lawyer feels that the client is impeding his ability to do that, he is free to ask him to find another lawyer who can serve his needs better.

The doctor is not a servant who follows the whims of the patient. A doctor is a professional who gives the best treatment and guidance possible, and a patient is free to accept it or not, depending on what he/she wants

I’m not really sure this is true. Some doctors have a greater tolerance for risk than others. There are doctors that love to do experimental and risky surgeries if they get their patients’ consent after telling them about the risks.

Tyro…I’m pretty sure that writing a birth control script for a smoker != “experimental and risky surgery”.

Seeing as how I’ve known dozens of women who both smoke AND take BC and none of them have dropped dead from the combination.

Although I’m sure that, given time, the Bush administration would have extended the right to deny BC to women with a lighter in their purse…....

If I eat nothing but Twinkies for 30 years and give myself diabetes, a doctor is obliged to treat me.

If you have a condition which reduces the amount of nutrients you can absorb from food, requiring that you have your stomach tripled in size in order to avoid being malnourished, and that surgery is available, a doctor should recommend it to you.

If I hear about the surgery and request it, so that I can eat more Twinkies and get diabetes in 10 years instead, no doctor in their right mind would give it to me.

Do you honestly not see the difference between getting IVF for your first child and IVF for your seventh?

My mother was nearly killed by BCP use before the side effects of the very early formulations were known.  That said, I used BCP for years because the kinds of problems my mother had were fully addressed by new formulations of the pill. 

My mother was among that group of women who smoked while using OLD formulation pills.  The new ones still register added cardiovascular risk when combined with smoking, but it isn’t anywhere near the risks posed by pregnancy complications (or to both mother and gestate in an unintended pregnancy that a woman who smokes choses to complete).

Sounds like the doctor should have read the practice guidelines and the insert information, advised the patient of the risk, and prescribed the pills (absent the patient’s mom having died of a stroke at a young age or some other specific extreme circumstance).

Fair enough…And I’m sorry I brought that example up. Guess it’s a bad analogy. And I’m not sure how I’d feel if it were me but having experienced STRONG counsel from physicians, I’ve generally heeded there advice so I don’t know what the outcome would be if I chose to ignore them.

I have been frustrated before for treatment of non-gynecological health issues. I have a VERY bad back for which I had surgery when I was younger. I’m in pain, have difficulty balancing and have considerable numbness in my left leg. I will need to have total spinal reconstruction at some point. Major stuff. I bring it up because there are two schools of thought with regard to this reconstruction. There are doctors who WILL NOT do the surgery until the patient is almost completely incapacitated because it’s such a big, huge procedure whereas others will do it sooner to improve the quality of life of people still quite young comparatively speaking because they request it…Are the doctors who refuse to do the surgery sooner wrong because they want to be cautious even if their patients disagree with them? After all, the surgeries generally have a good outcome (patients do see improvement).

Oh, so Essie? I KNOW surgery has risks…

Do you honestly not see the difference between getting IVF for your first child and IVF for your seventh?

You are comparing a dichotomous situation to a continuous one.  In one case, the extremes compel a yes or no answer.  In the other, it is difficult to say - or decide who gets to say - when enough is enough.  For some women - like a neighbor who had one child, had a second child die in utero at 7 months gestation, and then developed seizures during her third attempt via IVF, the limit was one child.

Remember: up until recent years, having seven or ten or five or some large number of kids was considered to be typical.  We know a number of families in our neighborhood who came from very large families, but seem to have universally capped theirs at four.  If you come from a large family, want to have a large family, and can support a large family - and there are no extenuating health issues that would make it unethical for a doctor to do another implantation, why should you stop?

I just saw on the news that this mother is now asking for something like 2 million for her story.

Two things:

First, I’ll be shocked if she gets one red cent.  She’s too obviously grasping for attention and money, and there’s too much of the stench of opportunism, that she had these kids just to get $2 million.  People tend not to like to reward that sort of thing.

Second, I’ll be shocked if many of those children don’t get taken away by CPS sometime in the next several years.

I don’t see why all of the snowflake baby people don’t chip in to help her out.

Do you honestly not see the difference between getting IVF for your first child and IVF for your seventh?

As Ms. Kate said, who decides the cut-off point? If you have three boys and really want to try for a girl, some people are going to say four is “too many” and other people are going to say that your desire is reasonable.

I just saw on the news that this mother is now asking for something like 2 million for her story.

And she *might* just get it, if enough people want to read her story, watch her on TV, or otherwise hear more about her and her children. And, hey, if she does, then that’s a good outcome for everyone - the entertainment industry subsidizes her children (instead of the taxpayers), and the kids aren’t doomed to a life of neglect and poverty.

It’s problematic, as others have pointed out, in that it could encourage the phenomenon, but in that case, use your money to boycott the story and stop reading and talking about it on online articles with ads. Because, hey, it adds up.

Ms Kate, to clarify earlier, I do believe that IVF should be covered under health coverage. And why not? Should we not allow lesbians to reproduce unless they have money or are willing to find and accept a male for a crucial evening or two? Should we condemn childless who want desperately to conceive to a barren life just because they weren’t born with rich parents. Now, if you want to put some kind of limit on it like, the first kid is free, then that’s a worthy discussion. But, yes, I think that health care should cover reproductive choices like that, especially given how many people have had their fertility tampered with by government spending and choices beyond their immediate control. And if it costs a little more in overall health care costs, well, 1) I’m a Democrat for a reason - i.e. I think some things are more important than wringing the last little dollar out of my paycheck, even if other people are suffering, and 2) I’m pretty sure if we stopped invading other countries, we could easily afford a free IVF session for every infertile couple in America.

The fact that you have yours (your kids, your money) does not mean that we shouldn’t consider providing the same for others. Pointing out that *I* have privileges is kind of beside the point - I know I have privilege, and I want to extend that privilege to others. You don’t.

IVF is simply not health care.

Opinion, not fact, and spoken by a woman who has already “got hers”. So not worth too much when it comes to legislating my womb, in my humble opinion.

So, Essie, you do in fact think that a doctor should be required to do anything his/her patient requests—even if it’s implanting 20 embryos—because for a doctor to balk at anything the patient wants is unethical and restricts the patient’s freedom?  Keep in mind that there is no known case of 9 or higher where any of the resulting babies survived more than a few days.  Is that perfectly fine since, after all, the woman was able to have the reproductive services she wanted and that’s the only thing that matters?

Again, if this woman already had 13 kids and was having a 14th, it would be no big deal.  If she had 11 kids and was having triplets, it likewise would be no big deal.  It’s the decision to have EIGHT all at the same time that people are questioning.

Having a large family with the children mostly spaced out by a year or two is completely different than bringing 8 special-needs infants home all at the same time, especially when you already have 6 to take care of.  But, hey, she wanted to have 8 children all at the same time, so we can’t criticize that choice in any way.

If there were a medical industry standard guideline on the # of embryos that could be implanted, that’s a different kettle of fish. A doctor could say “I’m not going to implant more than five because it’s not recommended by the AMA and I could lose my license for doing so” is DIFFERENT than saying “I’m not going to implant more than five because you’ve got too many kids already.”

Baby fetishists encourage this kind of shit in people with weak egos by treating families who have multiple births as some kind of heroes, who are paraded all over teevee and given fucktons of free shit.

Except that most of these women – and the focus is almost always on the women – are not treated as heroes. They’re treated, wrongly or rightly, as curiosities – oddities. They’re but one act in the lineup of televised freak-show attractions.

Woman with no torso? Freak-show attraction.
Primordial dwarf? Freak-show attraction. 
Man missing part of his face? Freak-show attraction.
Woman with 18 kids and counting? Freak-show attraction.

All these people get paid fucktons of shit for the same reason as many sideshow actors got paid better for performing than they could have made doing anything else: because people are, and always have been, captivated by the unusual. 

A few people are inclined to copy the behavior of the Duggars, for example, not because the Duggars are treated well on television or even because they’re on TV at all, but because some folks like certain elements of the Duggar lifestyle.

Apparently that’s crazy though, what, with that having a “litter” of children and everything.

As Ms. Kate said, who decides the cut-off point?

How about Child Protection Services? Remember, they do this already when people cannot care for their existing children. And if House has not misled me, doctors are required to call CPS if they suspect neglect or other mistreatment of children. So I would expect a doctor to make a call and CPS to do a more thorough investigation on a case-by-case basis.

And I don’t see anything wrong with a CPS officer saying “you are barely coping with your kids and if you have any more we will almost certainly have to take them into care”. And then I would expect a doctor to hear that and refuse IVF treatment.

The fact that you have yours (your kids, your money) does not mean that we shouldn’t consider providing the same for others.

That’s not my arguement and you goddamn know that or you are too blind to your own privilege to see it.

My argument is that many woman do not have health care because it is too expensive.  Health insurance is expensive, in part, because coverage of expensive procedures with no direct health benefit have been state mandated.

This means that POOR WOMEN do not receive ANY HEALTH CARE because some WEALTHY or PRIVILEGED women get to have IVF because they are privileged enough to be insured.

THAT MAKES IVF COVERAGE A FEMINIST ISSUE!  It is a particularly feminist issue WHEN YOU CONSIDER that many of these POOR WOMEN (an estimated 8+% of them) are not only INFERTILE but WILL DEVELOP DIABETES AND HEART DISEASE because they they do not get treatment for a common cause of poor health and infertility.

If you continue to close your eyes and ears and say *blah blah blah what about ME ME ME ME blah blah blah MINE MINE MINE blah blah YOUR BEING SEXIST blah blah” in response, there is no known medical treatment to help you overcome your blind attachments to your own privilege.  Sorry.

And then I would expect a doctor to hear that and refuse IVF treatment.

And how would a doctor hear that?

And I don’t see anything wrong with a CPS officer saying “you are barely coping with your kids and if you have any more we will almost certainly have to take them into care”. And then I would expect a doctor to hear that and refuse IVF treatment.

Reading this back to myself - in this case since the woman in question wanted to have a big family (rather than to be pregnant a whole lot), on being told she couldn’t do that she might have just stopped on her own.

And how would a doctor hear that?

Follow-up with patient? Am I being hopelessly naive about what doctors can do?

Mnemosyne, I was going to answer you, but I see that MP has excellently answered your strawman:

If there were a medical industry standard guideline on the # of embryos that could be implanted, that’s a different kettle of fish. A doctor could say “I’m not going to implant more than five because it’s not recommended by the AMA and I could lose my license for doing so” is DIFFERENT than saying “I’m not going to implant more than five because you’ve got too many kids already.”

Ms Kate, before you hyperventilate, I will reiterate that I am advocating universal health coverage for everyone (including, and especially poor people) and that I believe that IVF should be included in health care. I was, in fact, responding to your ridiculous statement that IVF is not health care because it does not prolong life (having children likely does not prolong life, but then again neither do glasses, contacts, or braces, which I also support as part of “health care”). Your…strange goalpost movement wherein you seem to be arguing with a Fake Essie who advocated free IVF for all, but no diabetes treatment for poor people is…baffling.

I just logged in, and haven’t read all the latest comments, so I’m not sure what led up to this, but it’s certainly not representative of anything I’ve said:

Amanda:  “JoAnne, if we have to believe that every single woman out there is perfectly sane and never makes a wrong choice before we have equal rights, we might as well give up now.”

If a person is sufficiently mentally ill that she’s no longer allowed to manage her affairs, she can be denied medical treatments she wants.  By her guardian.  Otherwise, she’s presumed sane and competent to manage her own affairs.

Amanda:  “Also, JoAnne, respecting someone’s right to do something is a different thing than mindlessly agreeing with what they do.  I support the KKK’s right to say any racist thing they wish.  I do not, however, support it.  See the diff? “

I do.  I never said anyone doesn’t have a right to have an opinion.  In fact, unlike Melissa at Shakesville, I think it’s important for people to discuss these things, because otherwise it’s easy to fall into a solipsistic worldview that doesn’t take into account the experiences that you’ve never had or never will be able to have.

I’m wondering what you read of mine that suggested either of the statements you’ve made that I’ve just commented on.

Mnemosyne:  “So even though you think a person has the same right to have plastic surgery or to have IVF, you have no problem with someone’s access to plastic surgery being restricted because feelings are more important than the actual right?”

No, you cut out the part where I said I was arguing with people I thought would be pro-choice even if they weren’t pro-bodily-autonomy.

You can just go ahead and call me a liar if you prefer.  It’s more direct, and should I say, honest?

I was, in fact, responding to your ridiculous statement that IVF is not health care because it does not prolong life (having children likely does not prolong life, but then again neither do glasses, contacts, or braces, which I also support as part of “health care”).

Without my glasses, I would probably have been hit by traffic by now.

Your…strange goalpost movement wherein you seem to be arguing with a Fake Essie who advocated free IVF for all, but no diabetes treatment for poor people is…baffling.

It’s not quite a zero-sum game, but it’s close. The more treatments that are covered by any given insurance program, the higher the premiums become. Not a huge deal for people with employer-paid health insurance, but it raises insurance out of reach for poor people. Saying that fertility treatment is a RIGHT requires that it’s available to everyone, which means that it has to be included in all insurance programs, raising costs across the board and cutting people out of the market.

Pepito,

I’m sure someone could come up with an example where children “saved” their life. My point was just that defining everything that does not “prolong life” as “not health care” is needlessly myopic. Scoliosis is painful as hell, but it doesn’t actually kill you or shorten your life span, assuming several factors. So should we not treat scoliosis? Of course not. Many psychological ailments are not life threatening, and yet still deserve treatment. I believe that IVF for infertile couples falls under this “necessary for quality of life” argument.

If we want to talk zero-sum, it could well be “cheaper” to give infertile women IVF than to pay for an eternity of depression counselor and anti-depressant pills for childless couples. Not to mention the strain of the high number of barren-driven divorces (a statistical reality).

But, again, I was speaking of universal health coverage via the government, not of employer coverage. I could have swore I made that clear, but apparently I didn’t. Ah, both/and.

God Essie.  Way to prove her point.  Ms. Kate is saying that healthcare should “prolong life” or “improve the quality of life”.  Scoliosis?  Decreases one’s quality of life.  Myopia?  Decreases one’s quality of life.  Clinical depression?  Crippling anxiety?  Decreases one’s quality of life.  I think we’d all be extremely eager to hand you tons of research saying that having children does not, in fact, improve one’s quality of life. 

And if someone needs to see a counselor for the rest of her life because she can’t have kids, then I’m very, very tempted to say that she would need to see a therapist even after having kids because she has issues she needs to work through.

one ethical issue of this that a few people have mentioned but seems to be getting glossed over here is that we’re not just talking about one woman being able to care for and parent 14 normal healthy children, but that the 8 octuplets born are all going to have severe medical problems for the near future,  a certain number of them may not live past age 2 (that’s horrible to say but apparently a reality w/ preemies) and no matter what there are going to be tremendously expensive medical bills associated with these babies.

way above and beyond the initial outlay for the IVF and the argument of whether that should be free or not, and whether or not someone is judging that she has too many children all ready (one of them special needs).  carrying the eight babies to (near) term and then delivering 8 preemies - that’s a big cost that someone is going to have to suck up and pay.  and it’s an issue here, that can’t be dismissed easily, just because one believes in reproductive freedom (which i happen to).

medical ethics is the thing at stake here, IMHO.  and the ethics of doing something so dangerous to both mother and babies, that will result in terrible and expensive health problems for the babies at the very best, well that’s not so cut and dried as “bodily autonomy”.

“Many of you are missing Amanda’s point: if there was a biological urge to be pregnant or rear children, sex would not need to feel good!”

And if there was a biological urge to nourish your body, food would not need to taste good!

That is why anyone who loses their sense of taste will immediately stop eating and starve to death within weeks.

If a person is sufficiently mentally ill that she’s no longer allowed to manage her affairs, she can be denied medical treatments she wants.  By her guardian.  Otherwise, she’s presumed sane and competent to manage her own affairs.

It depends on the doctor - if a doctor has doubts that a person is understanding the consent forms to ANYTHING that doctor can say- “Ok I’m not comfortable with your understanding of the risks involved, etc.” and perhaps ask them to bring back someone who could help them understand. Or if a doctor could sense that the person doesn’t understand the risks enough that there could be a potential lawsuit then sure- a doctor CAN say no.
I work for an IRB- we make consent forms and they are detailed. If a doctor doesn’t think that a patient has read through the consent forms they can say “come back in a few days and we can sign them together”. There are protocols to medical procedures - ones set in place by the government but also by the state, the hospital board that the doctor may be at, etc.

medical ethics is the thing at stake here, IMHO.  and the ethics of doing something so dangerous to both mother and babies, that will result in terrible and expensive health problems for the babies at the very best, well that’s not so cut and dried as “bodily autonomy”.

Thanks, trishka. I forgot to add that to my statement above.

GumbyAnne:

“Many of you are missing Amanda’s point: if there was a biological urge to be pregnant or rear children, sex would not need to feel good!”

And if there was a biological urge to nourish your body, food would not need to taste good!

That is why anyone who loses their sense of taste will immediately stop eating and starve to death within weeks.

There’s this little thing called hunger.  It’s like being horny.  It urges you to do something that feels good.

Danica:  “It depends on the doctor - if a doctor has doubts that a person is understanding the consent forms to ANYTHING that doctor can say- “Ok I’m not comfortable with your understanding of the risks involved, etc.” and perhaps ask them to bring back someone who could help them understand. Or if a doctor could sense that the person doesn’t understand the risks enough that there could be a potential lawsuit then sure- a doctor CAN say no.
I work for an IRB- we make consent forms and they are detailed. If a doctor doesn’t think that a patient has read through the consent forms they can say “come back in a few days and we can sign them together”. There are protocols to medical procedures - ones set in place by the government but also by the state, the hospital board that the doctor may be at, etc.”

Thanks for the detail. 

I think there’s a difference here, though, in that you’re talking about a person being able to understand the procedure and its risks.  This is pro-patient in that you are making sure the patient has everything s/he needs to make a decision that is right for her or him.

I was talking about the kind of screening that would say “if you have more than N kids, then you’re automatically crazy to want another one and we will deny you IVF.”  That’s deciding for the person whether that risk is a risk s/he should take, regardless of what the person’s opinion is.  It takes the decision out of the hands of the patient altogether.

“There’s this little thing called hunger.  It’s like being horny.  It urges you to do something that feels good.”

That was my point.  Our motivators to eat include hunger and the fact that food is tasty.  These two things are related but not the same and are both physical urges that lead to the same result (eating).

If we have more than one physical urge driving us to nourish out bodies, then I don’t see why we can’t have more than one physical urge leading us to procreate: that sex feels good and also (for some people) a desire to get pregnant that is separate from enjoyment of sex.

GumbyAnne: “If we have more than one physical urge driving us to nourish out bodies, then I don’t see why we can’t have more than one physical urge leading us to procreate: that sex feels good and also (for some people) a desire to get pregnant that is separate from enjoyment of sex.”

Oh, sure.  I didn’t quite get the context there; sorry.  I agree that there can be multiple drivers towards pregnancy.  I’d think another one would be if once you’ve been pregnant you liked it, for emotional, hormonal, psychological, whatever reasons that can be physical or become physical because the body reflects the mind.

I was talking about the kind of screening that would say “if you have more than N kids, then you’re automatically crazy to want another one and we will deny you IVF.” That’s deciding for the person whether that risk is a risk s/he should take, regardless of what the person’s opinion is.  It takes the decision out of the hands of the patient altogether.

Well I was talking about a doctor - who should be well trained in medical ethics - would counsel a woman first before they do any fertility procedure of any kind. (or have an operation of any sort really- I dont’ think that many would be suprise at the number of consent forms that peopel have to sign) People might come away from this counsel thinking that a doctor wants them to do something in a certain way. A good doctor is going to be completely honest with the risks - and, let’s face it, any woman going through IVF is going to be concerned with the risks to any potential offspring that might result from the IVF.
A woman that would be in a doctor’s opinion, glossing over the risks and very dead set on not reducing despite the potential (and well known) risks to the potential offspring- that should have thrown up alarm bells. The fertility clinic and the hospital and whomever else would be medically involved in this would be open to potential lawsuits.

There’s a difference between being medically counseled and having a trained doctor give you an OK and a doctor saying “Oh you CAN’T HAVE KIDS”.
This woman, no doubt ,shopped around (with whatever money she had) and found a doctor to do it that wasn’t too concerned about ethics.
That or the place she worked for (a fertility clinic? right? I don’t know the details) did it- hence the issues with doing any procedure for a person who is in the employ of a clinic. (I also have issues with a person who works for a plastic surgery center that would have procedures done there)

It’s a very very fine line. Like the sanity of a person who thinks they can raise 14 kids on their own. It’s not really considering the impact that their actions have on the rest of the world.

Sorry, I just can’t sign on to that.

I think the problem with a statement like that is that physical urges are universal. EVERYONE knows what the sensation for hunger is. Everyone knows what the sensation for fatigue and the sensation for sexual arousal are. Everyone knows what it’s like to have to pee really bad. Neurologists can show the body sending signals to the brain saying things like “HEY, you could really use a glass of water right now.”

A lot of people on this thread have absolutely no concept of what a “physical urge” is to have a baby. There are no studies that examine how the male and female body sends signals to the brain to say “time for a baby now!”

We don’t have instincts. We don’t travel hundreds of miles to determined locations to spawn, we don’t go into heat, our body has no mechanism for signaling that we need to have babies. If there were such thing as a biological imperative to have children, then birth control would never have been invented: just like we don’t have pills to completely cease all digestive activity or the need for sleep. We don’t have that stuff because it’s a biological imperative that we do these things. It’s not a biological imperative to have a baby, and since there’s no imperative, we don’t have physical urges.

We have minds and psyches and consciousness and sometimes the brain can influence the body but there is nothing “physical” to the biological clock. It’s psychological.

If there were a medical industry standard guideline on the # of embryos that could be implanted, that’s a different kettle of fish.

Given that the medical professionals who facilitated the pregnancies haven’t proudly stepped forward—we still don’t know the whole story here about what was done, and how above-board it was—we can make a fair assumption that they’d be in deep ethical shit.

Anyway, this follow-up piece from the Observer on Mandy Allwood—pregnant with octuplets, chose not to selectively abort, lost them all, media circus—is worth reading.

You can just go ahead and call me a liar if you prefer.  It’s more direct, and should I say, honest?

Oh, I don’t think you’re lying, exactly.  I just think you’ve climbed up on top of a hill and refuse to admit that maybe sometimes medical ethics conflicts with bodily autonomy and reproductive choice, and that sometimes medical ethics should win over strict reproductive choice.

Can you really never picture any situation ever where medical ethics would mean that someone would not be able to do exactly as she wishes with her reproductive system?  Does a doctor always have to do exactly what their patient requests even if it’s harmful to the patient and/or the patient’s offspring because it’s the patient’s choice?  Even if the patient seems to be disregarding the clear dangers of that choice?

Let’s say it’s a woman with an ectopic pregnancy who insists that she wants to try bring the pregnancy to term even though the ultrasound shows the embryo is implanted in the fallopian tube.  Should the doctor agree to let her continue a pregnancy that will kill both her and the embryo since it is, after all, her choice to do so?

OK. Back for one last round…I can’t let this one slide, Essie. YOU ARE WRONG…

“Scoliosis is painful as hell, but it doesn’t actually kill you or shorten your life span, assuming several factors. So should we not treat scoliosis? Of course not.”

I need to inform you ARE COMPLETELY INCORRECT and that severe scoliosis can have a HUGE impact on one’s health and, if left untreated CAN shorten your life. How? When you have scoliosis, your spine doesn’t just curve, it twists, leaving your major organs vulnerable to damage. Before I had my spinal fusion surgery as a child (for scoliosis), my lung capacity had diminished to less than 50% (I could no longer take a deep breath) and my heart had begun to beat irregularly. AND my curves were only getting worse. In countries where scoliosis goes untreated, people DO DIE FROM THE CONDITION!!!!!

And, if you’re going to spout bullshit about how someone, somewhere was “saved” by giving birth, you need to know the FACTS about this other “stuff.” You keep talking about your issues and problems and how this all concerns you…FINE..Now I am doing the same. You do not know what you are talking about and after everything I’ve been through to treat this awful condition, I’ll be damned if someone will discuss it as if it is little more than an invenience…

sorry…that last word there is inconvenience…

Mnemosyne:

[JoAnne] You can just go ahead and call me a liar if you prefer.  It’s more direct, and should I say, honest?

[Mnemosyne] Oh, I don’t think you’re lying, exactly.  I just think you’ve climbed up on top of a hill and refuse to admit that maybe sometimes medical ethics conflicts with bodily autonomy and reproductive choice, and that sometimes medical ethics should win over strict reproductive choice.

I “admit” that sometimes those two conflict.  I don’t think I ever said they didn’t.

Do you wish me to “admit” to believing that medical ethics should sometimes win over reproductive choice?  That would be lying, because I don’t believe medical ethics should trump reproductive choice. 

I understand that it’s possible that there’s a reproductive procedure no doctor will perform because of medical ethics.  I think the person who wants that procedure has the right to have it, but I that doesn’t mean I can see a practical way to force a doctor to perform it.  Rights do not equal ability, though we should strive to bring them as close as possible.

Can you really never picture any situation ever where medical ethics would mean that someone would not be able to do exactly as she wishes with her reproductive system?  Does a doctor always have to do exactly what their patient requests even if it’s harmful to the patient and/or the patient’s offspring because it’s the patient’s choice?  Even if the patient seems to be disregarding the clear dangers of that choice?

If the patient is clearly not understanding the danger, no.

If the patient understands but judges the danger differently from the doctor, yes.  It’s the patient’s body.  Again, I know it may be hard to find a doctor whose ethics allow such a procedure.  It looks like some doctor’s ethics matched that of this woman.

As to if it’s harmful to the patient’s offspring—until it’s born, it’s part of the mother.  Abortion, after all, is harmful to the fetus.

Let’s say it’s a woman with an ectopic pregnancy who insists that she wants to try bring the pregnancy to term even though the ultrasound shows the embryo is implanted in the fallopian tube.  Should the doctor agree to let her continue a pregnancy that will kill both her and the embryo since it is, after all, her choice to do so?

It’s stupid, probably fatal.  So is not going to the emergency room when you’re having a heart attack or acute appendicitis.  But I think you’re allowed to not have a doctor do something to you.  Maybe she feels not carrying this baby would make life not worth living.

If it were a person I cared about, I’d be really torn up about it.  I’d try to convince her differently.

I’d be tempted to “knock her out” and call an ambulance so they could maybe remove the embryo while she’s unconscious, but I know that that would be wrong.  I also know I can’t say for sure I wouldn’t do it.  Life is ambiguous that way.

Look, I have had to deal with medical choices my aging and then dying mother has made by herself, with help from me, with help from other family members when I was there and when I was not there.  I know how wrenching these things can be, and how much second-guessing of others and yourself takes place, and also how people think differently about these things, even thinking differently day to day or hour to hour.  I want as much communication going on as possible about medical decisions among those who are involved.  This includes a doctor giving both information and her or his point of view on what might be best.

I do not think that the doctor should have veto power.  And yes, that means there are difficult situations where a doctor doesn’t feel it’s within her medical ethics to do something a patient asks for. 

I think self-determination rights are inherent in all reproductive choices.  I think self-determination rights are inherent in all bodily autonomy issues, too, but, getting back to what you apparently perceived as my hypocrisy about this, I didn’t think this would be as easily agreed upon by a group of feminists than the pro-choice stance.  Hence my “this isn’t someone getting yet another boob job.”

I think on average a bodily autonomy issue is less of a world-shaker for an individual than a reproductive issue, mostly because the average reproductive issue is usually a very big deal.  But both kinds range all over the map from “meh, I kinda wanted that, wonder what is on TV” to “I really feel like I will die if I can’t have that.”  I gave short shrift to bodily autonomy in that way, and I’m sorry it misled you and maybe others about my views.

Let me just be the one to say that I actually do think that it is immoral to have even 3 children in today’s world. So I object strongly to any public policy, including making insurance cover any fertility treatment at all, past the first child. For men, that means any fertility treatment for men who are not essentially 100% infertile naturally.

Full disclosure: I have 1, do not plan to have another with the same woman, but have not gotten my tubes tied because I would be willing to serve as a donor for a lesbian friend.

I also believe that a policy which added to inequality - for instance, a “psychological” exam which ended up stopping only poor women from having large families - would be morally worse than no policy. So I understand that, until a majority of people agree with me, a majority large enough and clear enough that rich-folks-loopholes would be addressed, then the only kind of mandatory contraception I can responsibly advocate is education (as in, a elementary/high school/college degree, not specifically sex ed). But still, I think that we can easily, with no need for hand-wringing, refuse to have society pay for fertility treatments after the first living child, and refuse to allow fertility treatments after the second living child. These are nice, bright lines, and I can’t see how impartially refusing certain non-health-related treatments steps on any rights.

I understand that these views will horrify many people here, and that they sound awfully similar to a lot of anti-feminist garbage. I nevertheless believe that there is no incompatibility with these views and feminism. In fact, I think that these views themselves come from the same place that my feminism does. The world just can’t bear too many more of us in anything but squalor, and I support dignity.

If we have more than one physical urge driving us to nourish out bodies, then I don’t see why we can’t have more than one physical urge leading us to procreate: that sex feels good and also (for some people) a desire to get pregnant that is separate from enjoyment of sex.

You actually contradicted your point. Hunger is both a necessary and sufficient motivation to drive our need for nourishment. Taste determines the type of substances we seek out and avoid, but it does not compel us to eat. We’re talking apples and oranges, here.

If we lose our sense of taste, we still eat. If we lose our sense of hunger, we die.

Do you wish me to “admit” to believing that medical ethics should sometimes win over reproductive choice?  That would be lying, because I don’t believe medical ethics should trump reproductive choice.

I guess that’s where we disagree then—I don’t think doctors should be forced to participate when their patients are determined to kill themselves.  If the patient wants to kill herself by not getting needed medical care, that’s her choice, but no doctor should have to approve of that behavior and be forced to continue seeing that person as a patient.  You may want to go back and read some of your arguments, because that’s what you were advocating, that doctors should not be allowed to refuse reproductive care to patients for any reason.

See, that’s what’s been funny about this entire conversation.  For some reason, you seem to think that “unethical” is a synonym for “illegal,” so all of us talking about how an action is unethical must of course believe that the action should be made illegal.  I haven’t seen a single person on this thread argue that this woman should have been prevented BY LAW from having these children, and yet you and Essie keep reconstructing that strawman over and over again.

As always, Roy at Alicublog locates the best right-wing froth and packages it just right for your amusement.

“Constant “You will never understand the joys of parenting until you have children yourself” concern trolling of family and friends. “

Thank God for the few honest friends that will tell you their true feelings about the children they’ve had.  So far, for my friends, a mixed bag.

Essie, I’ve only read the bottom half of the comments, but I think the others are right.  What happens when you push your position to the logical limits?  I mean, when the government provides food and housing for people who can’t provide for themselves, it is never a mansion and it is never roasted quail for dinner, because we can’t afford it.  But that doesn’t mean they provide nothing. 

To the same extent, it would be right that the government provide IVF for the poor, but if the health care system can’t even afford prevention care for most people who can’t afford it, then how and why did this woman get this ostentatious treatment?  It is like giving one homeless, hungry person a flat in SoHo and a $100/day food stipend and jewelry while giving others nothing.  I mean, pardon my simplicity, I am not an expert at all, and I don’t like making comparisons like this, but this is the only way I can put it. 

Barren-driven divorces?  What about too-many-children-too-little-money driven divorces?  If you think counseling for the childless is expensive, why don’t you also think counseling to the impoverished parents of 14 is expensive?

I can’t help think that because this discussion is being driven by a large number of women who do not want children, there are elements that make no sense.

There is no biological urge to have a baby in the sense that there is a biological urge to have sex. But there *is* an urge to have a baby in the exact same sense that there is an urge to go into the profession you would love and enjoy. If you *really* want to be a doctor, you will be unhappy if you are forced to be a lawyer, even though many, many lawyers are very happy to be lawyers. There’s no biological compulsion per se, because doctors have only existed since human civilization, so there can’t be an evolutionary reason to want to be a doctor. But you could want to be a doctor because you want to help sick people even *if* you lived in a culture that treats doctors like dirt. (My proof of this: we *do* live in a culture that treats teachers and social workers like dirt, yet many people have a very strong desire to enter these professions.) Of course you can increase the value of a profession by improving its status, but people do what they really love and want to do even when the status is zero.

When people say “it’s not biological, therefore it’s cultural”, they are *totally* overlooking the role of the individual human. I mean, for one thing, we all live in the same culture, pretty much, so why did I want a baby and you didn’t? I’m a feminist, I declared myself a feminist at the age of *three*, I never thought a woman *shouldn’t* have a career, I never imagined myself not having a career… but I wanted a baby, and I wanted a baby from a pretty early age (I started noticing a desire to have babies right about 24 or so, though financially I was never able to afford it until 34.) I didn’t love children as a child, I hated taking care of my baby brother, I didn’t have or want a big wedding or declarations of love on Valentine’s Day or a man to pay my way through life, so where is this cultural pressure to have children supposedly coming from?

I’m going to say something most of you can’t relate to. I had to work through the *opposite* cultural pressure to get to a place where I wanted to have kids. Because the perception I have always gotten, the perception the media and society feeds me, is that mothers aren’t people. Women grow up to be mothers and then they cease to exist as independent actors. I thought that motherhood was, essentially, death. I had to see enough evidence that in real life, mothers actually exercise their minds and are active in politics, media and business, before I could come around to accepting my own desire to have a baby. Culture didn’t tell me to have a baby; cultural pressures combined with my own psychology to say “Don’t be a mother! Run away! Never, never!” The desire to have a child came from *me*.

It also wasn’t a desire to be pregnant. I hated being pregnant. I knew I would hate being pregnant. The concept of pregnancy terrified me before I did it, and after I did it just filled me with a kind of dull dread when I got pregnant again. I wanted a *baby*, of my own genetic makeup, but if there had been artificial wombs I would have been all over that.

So I don’t believe there is a biological urge to be pregnant or to have a baby in any sense like there is a biological urge to have sex. But I believe that the psychological urge to have a baby is not *nearly* as affected by culture as you all think. Humans are wired to love babies, and it is quite easy to imagine how the biological “ooh, cute babies” turns into the psychological “I want one!” (And no, just because you, poster who doesn’t love babies, do not love babies doesn’t mean that most people aren’t wired for it. I mean, some people are asexual but that doesn’t mean most of us aren’t wired to want sex.) I mean, think about it. If you see a food you’ve never eaten but it looks tasty, don’t you want it? If you’re shown an experience that looks fun, don’t you want to try it? Babies are cute and people love them. That’s why people want them. Cultural pressure to have them certainly does exist, but I would argue that there is also a profound denigration and despising of mothers in our culture, so there is in fact also profound cultural pressure in the opposite direction for *any* woman who thinks of herself as an independent person in control of her own life.

As for this woman, I absolutely believe that there needs to be an AMA medical standard forbidding doctors to implant more than five embryoes at once, because that’s the maximum that a human woman can bear *without* causing them all massive health problems, and the suggested limit should be three, because three is the average number that can be born without causing massive health problems for all of them. I believe this needs to be a hard and fast rule that applies to all women, pro-lifers, pro-choice, rich, poor, whatever, because the sake of the unborn children suggests that it is highly immoral to implant more than five at once. Beyond that, I don’t frickin’ care. If a woman wants 14 kids, fine, let her have 14 kids. There are more than enough women who don’t want *any* kids to balance her. But she should not be allowed to have more than five at once, medically. And a woman going in for the kind of fertility treatment that can cause high multiples should be required to sign a waiver stating that she consents to selective abortion should she become pregnant with more than five, and if she does not consent she can’t have that kind of treatment.

A science fiction story I read as a teenager (can’t remember the title or author) had as one of the plot elements the idea that every person was issued what amounted to a reproduction license at adulthood.  To have a child, either the father or the mother had to surrender theirs, permanently.  Yes, there are problems with this, but is it really such a bad idea?

Please review the history of the 计划生育政策 in the People’s Republic of China.

...gotta stop reading this damn thread…

I hate, hate, hate to say this, since personal freedom and autonomy (including sexual and reproductive freedom) are very important to me (vestiges of my libertarian past, combined with my liberal present), but I think that the days when people can be permitted to reproduce at will are gone.  Indeed, they should have been gone a generation or two ago… Yes, there are problems with this, but is it really such a bad idea?

Yes. It’s a terrible, awful, no good, very bad idea, that shoots a giant hole in the *very* thing that will save us all from the overpopulation dystopia.

When women are given the right to control their own reproduction, the means to do so, and the education and social freedom to do something else with their lives of value besides have babies, the birth rate plummets. It doesn’t even have to be a society that’s particularly progressive. Japan’s birth rate has plummeted because, as low as the social status of women is, it’s *still* more rewarding to be an unmarried woman or a childfree woman who has a career than it is to be someone whose life is consumed by having children. (In fact these societies which are *not* feminist but do give unmarried, childless women some freedom and the ability to have careers are *more* likely to have low birth rate.)

The entire Western world is reproducing at below replacement rate. Europe has zero population growth. America, with all our immigration, has slightly higher than zero. Educated women with birth control options regulate their own child bearing. Most choose to have two or less than two children, so the few who do want more than two are counterbalanced by the many who choose to have none, or one.

The solution to world overpopulation is not for Westerners to have fewer children. This is sort of like trying to control your power costs by removing the bulb in the refrigerator while meanwhile you’ve got five plasma TV’s that are being used twenty-four-seven and a server farm in your basement. The West is *below* replacement rate. *We* are not the ones who are directly impacted by the overpopulation crisis.

The overpopulation crisis exists solely in places where women have no rights. When they have no right to say no to sex, when they have no right to birth control, when they have no right to have a career or do anything with their lives of value except have kids, they produce more children than they, personally, would probably have preferred had there been any options. So the most effective way to reduce the world’s population is to actively and aggressively push the notion that all women should be educated, all women should have access to birth control, all women should be permitted to work if they want, and all women should have the right to choose who they marry and to say “no” to sex even with their husbands.

Enacting *any* kind of social control on women to regulate reproduction (and because we cannot see it in men, it will *always* be enacted on women) defeats the only thing that causes women to naturally regulate their own. As soon as you tell women, no, your bodies *aren’t* yours, you *don’t* have reproductive rights, the government *can* tell you what to do… you’re right back at square one. And see, humans are wired to love and want children, so one of two things will happen if you enact strict population controls. Either people will be miserable, they will seek ways around the regulations, many people will find the regulations horrifying and continually try to repeal them, and eventually there will be a huge, probably religious, backlash that in the name of “freeing” women to be mothers sends them all back to the kitchen to be barefoot and pregnant… or the people living under this regime will have to psychologically condition themselves to *not* want children, so children will be despised and looked upon as vermin by a majority of the population, and pregnant women will be social pariahs and may even be murdered for appearing to break the laws. Oh, and there will be mass female infanticide/selective female abortion, because in any society where women are regulated and seen as potential criminals, women will have lower status than men, and in any society where women have lower status than men and are only allowed to have one child, boys will be given preference, and because men are more violent, more entitled, and trained not to empathize with women, when those boys grow up we will see epidemics of rape, war, crime, terrorism, domestic abuse and general violence.

(continued from previous post)

You people have got to read some science fiction. (Or, as draeton pointed out, read some history about the one-child policy in China.) I keep seeing this “but maybe we need to deny people the right to reproduce FOR THE SAKE OF HUMANITY!” meme turning up among supposed progressives, and it both disgusts me and makes me think none of you have read a damn thing about reproductive justice and population control. In the 60’s, it was widely believed that the demographic explosion would consume the Earth, and many dystopian science fiction stories were written about the need to regulate human reproduction, and even though such stories often kind of ignored the female perspective on the whole thing, they still thought through the horrors that would result pretty thoroughly. But since that time, we have seen that the birth control pill has brought demographic *implosion* to every nation that educates its women, gives them any social status at all, and allows them access to birth control. Regulating the bodies of women is the *opposite* of what we need to do to control the world’s population; we need to bring the freedom we Westerners with feminist beliefs who post on progressive blogs to *all* the world’s women (including many here in America who are being told that birth control is evil.)

Also, inventing a reliable form of male birth control would probably cause the birth rate to plummet even farther, and if nations such as China and India adopted a robust Social Security system like most nations in the West (and Japan) have, so people didn’t feel they needed to have kids to provide for their old age, that would also be incredibly helpful.

I’ll agree with Alara: for progressives the solution to overpopulation IS NOT regulating women’s bodies and putting a limit on how many children they may produce.  The solution is to raise the status of women worldwide, provide them with education and resources to control their fertility, and to de-emphasize motherhood as the only or best option for their lives.

I really hate the “I’m anti-choice for the environment” meme.  You simply cannot call yourself pro-choice or progressive and propose legal regulations on what happens in a woman’s uterus.  No, not even when you use the environment as your anti-choice “out”.

I can’t help think that because this discussion is being driven by a large number of women who do not want children, there are elements that make no sense.

Yes, because obviously those women have to be excluded or sent to the corner everytime kids/baybeez/childbearing comes up. They aren’t using their parts! PLEASE. /snark

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a) not wanting kids of your own and b) not wanting to deal with millions more people that we can’t sustain on this planet with limited resources.

Speaking of Sci-fi- let’s start going into space a lot more and finding a possible Earth 2- then we have all the room. “We’re here to go”.

We are all here to go into SPACE. Do I hear any questions about that?

I wouldn’t worry about overpopulation.

We’re already over the carrying capacity for the planet in conditions likely to occur in the medium-term future, suggesting that the problem will resolve itself quite well.  Cf Rapa-Nui.

Mnemosyne:  “For some reason, you seem to think that “unethical” is a synonym for “illegal,” “

You are reading that into what I’ve read, then, because I know the difference and, so far as I know, haven’t stated anything one way when I meant it the other way.  If you see an example, please tell me.

In fact, you could argue that we have at least as much an overpopulation crisis as the Third World, if not more so, BECAUSE WE CONSUME SO MUCH MORE OF THE WORLD’S RESOURCES PER CAPITA.

That problem will *not* be solved by having fewer people. Unless, of course, the reason for the fewer people is nuclear apocalypse.

It really annoys me that people conflate the two. If all Westerners stopped having children, today, what would happen is that in order to keep our society going we would open up to massive immigration. Then all the new people coming in would have our lifestyles and our overconsumption. New *babies* being born in the west isn’t the problem here, the problem is how the adults live their lives.

Yes, because obviously those women have to be excluded or sent to the corner everytime kids/baybeez/childbearing comes up. They aren’t using their parts! PLEASE. /snark

Funny, but I was more thinking along the lines of “Yes, because obviously women who don’t want children know everything there is to know about wanting children!” I mean, choose not to have kids all you want. But if a bunch of twenty-somethings were sitting around talking about how it feels to be old, and an old person came along and said “You guys are missing something, because you’ve never been old”, would the reaction be, “Yes, because obviously only the elderly have anything important to say ever!”?

You do not understand what it’s like to want children if you don’t want children and never wanted children, so when you get a very large contigent of women who never wanted kids together to talk about why a woman wanted an insanely huge amount of kids, you get a lot of stuff that seems to imply that wanting a child is just this state that’s imposed on women from the outside, caused by the patriarchy, like the desire to change your name when you get married. And anyone who comes along and says “But I really do feel that there’s a strong need to have kids” gets shot down with “But it’s not *biological*, so it isn’t real! It’s caused by your culture!”

I understand that you don’t like having your experiences dismissed by a culture that says that women aren’t real women if they don’t have kids. But when you’re talking about *why* women want kids, maybe actually listening to people who *do* want kids is, in fact, the appropriate thing to do, not just assuming that you know what’s going on with them.

Alara Rogers: I can’t help think that because this discussion is being driven by a large number of women who do not want children, there are elements that make no sense.

Danica Lefse Queen: Yes, because obviously those women have to be excluded or sent to the corner everytime kids/baybeez/childbearing comes up. They aren’t using their parts! PLEASE. /snark

She didn’t say that at all.  She was suggesting that people who don’t want children aren’t always going to understand why other people do want them.

In other words, it’s not “you shut up.”  It’s “let me speak, too, because you may be missing this perspective.”

I don’t want kids, never have, never will.  That doesn’t mean I think people who want one, two, five, ten, or fourteen children, single, married, or in a commune, are defective or mentally ill or deluded.  They’re different from me. 

When someone tells me she’s yearning for a baby, I don’t automatically assume it’s social pressure.  I also don’t automatically assume it isn’t.  Lots of people love babies and really want them.

Living a life in blind diametrical opposition to everything you’ve been told is as much a trap as living according to what you’ve been told.  Everyone says women always want babies, it’s only natural.  This is false.  But the opposite, that women never want babies, that this desire is wholly artificial and cultural, is also false.

But the opposite, that women never want babies, that this desire is wholly artificial and cultural, is also false.

One more point: cultural is not necessarily artificial. I am not my genes.

It really annoys me that people conflate the two. If all Westerners stopped having children, today, what would happen is that in order to keep our society going we would open up to massive immigration. Then all the new people coming in would have our lifestyles and our overconsumption. New *babies* being born in the west isn’t the problem here, the problem is how the adults live their lives.

I’m not sure that this is true. Parents are unlikely to push their kids to live more frugally than they did, whereas people who come in from the outside at least have some cultural buffer against it. (As an imported Brit, I’ve raised my consumption from what it was but I still don’t compare to many of my American coworkers.)

Damn, this is a long, long thread, as I knew it would be.  Apologies if someone’s addressed this point, made early, about the biological need-to-breed:

Have you not ever spoken to a woman who strongly, physically—not just intellectually and emotionally—wants to bear children?

There is no such clearly delineated separation between the physical, emotional, and intellectual. 

Physical sensations can be induced by emotions, emotions inspired by thoughts, thoughts influenced by culture.  Therefore, the presence of genuine physical sensations doesn’t mean those sensations are necessarily biological in origin, nor serve some evolutionary function.  Cues get mixed up all the time.  How would you explain fetishism if that were not the case?  Is there some genuine evolutionary advantage to, say, sexual pleasure at the sight of really cool shoes or the sound of Bjork’s singing?

I get the desire to have kids.  I’ve felt it.  Felt it as a longing for something missing in my life- and as with most frustrated longings, it is sometimes accompanied by a physical sensation.  But it’s the longing causing the sensation, not the other way around, and I don’t see how the longing is not necessarily a result of social pressure on adult men and women to be parents before age 30 and nothing to do with evolutionary biology.

Ok, now I’ll read the rest of the thread and see how many people have already made this point only more succinctly and cleverly.

I recognize all the problems that have been mentioned, but the damn planet is dying and too many people is the cause.  There is not a single major problem in the world that is, if not directly caused by, then at least exacerbated by, overpopulation.  The earth will find a way to reduce the human population drastically if we don’t, and we will like its solution far less than even the draconian way of limiting reproduction.  Is mass starvation, coupled with global warfare over arable land and potable water really better than placing limits on childbirth?

Seriously, if this worries you then choose not to have children or fewer of them.  Encourage others to reduce their consumption to more sustainable levels and personally model this lifestyle.  Advocate legislation that would force big business to abide by environmental regulations and support new laws that would encourage more recycling (through tax breaks or subsidies, whatever). Do what you can to support green technology. Openly support the notion that adults who decide to forego childbearing have lives that are just as meaningful and are not living some extended adolescence.

But if you do not see the inherent problems associated with the government telling WOMEN how many children they may bear, then you really need to crack a history book or two. Because if you think any anti-natalist policies will be fairly applied across class, racial, and national boundaries, you are woefully naive and uninformed.

Alara, we’re not saying that the need to have children doesn’t exist, we’re disagreeing that the fundamental nature of that need is biological, because we’re FUCKING SICK OF BEING CALLED “UNNATURAL” BECAUSE WE DON’T WANT KIDS.

I would doubt that many on this forum would suggest that either the desire to have sex with a person of the opposite gender or the desire to have sex with a person of the same gender were Unnatural or not biologically determined.

I think of want kids/don’t want kids the same way.  It isn’t an either/or or exclusive situation in my thinking - wanting and not wanting kids may both be biologically based and innate, but vary by individual just like sexual preference can vary or any other “polymorphism” in humans.

headdesk. headdeask. headdesk.

MS, maybe for YOU this discussion is purely academic. But for those of us with wombs that people are actively trying to control AS WE SPEAK, this is not idle chatter.

MS:  “I don’t see anyone chiming in to explain exactly WHY a right to unlimited reproduction must be preserved at all costs, even if it leads to a future of mass famine and global warfare over resources.”

A right to unlimited reproduction will not lead to a future of mass famine and global warfare, so long as it’s coupled with unlimited reproductive control.  When you can have the babies you want, and not have the ones you don’t want, when your decisions rest in your own hands, you are more responsible.  Maybe not individually viz. the poster mom we started out discussing, but now that women have the right to BC, suddenly it’s more usual to have two or three children rather than four, six or eight.

Limiting children makes them either hated or loved beyond their real value.  Prohibition has that effect on stuff.

Wow.  Lots of comments.  Will she get a lot of money for her story?  Probably, judging by the degree of general interest.  Some sleazeball outfit (Fox) will likely pay for the ratings.  Obama might do something heroic and they could use such a story to divert their audience’s attention for a few days.

Should she be allowed to have eleventy seven kids?  If she can afford it.  There’s really no issue of who can have how many kids except for the ability to afford it.  If she found a way to pay for the IVF, then I have no issue with HER decision, even if she is on welfare and homeless already.  Homelessness is not a reason for the government to snatch your children.  We’ll likely see a whole tassle of homelessness in the near future.  Ditto for poverty.  If she got government assistance for the IVF, then heads should roll.

As to the general question of who decides on these issues, I’ll throw my vote to the commenter who noted that we already have a Child Protective Services division that handles (usually badly) this type of task.  I wouldn’t stand in the way of a total review of the agency, if you won’t stand in the way of funding them better so they can properly monitor children is danger.  Sames goes for the Food and Drug Administration.  There’s too much profit is poisoning us, our kids and even our pets with toxins of easily identifiable origin.  It doesn’t have to be that way.

Do some people have an overactive urge to reproduce?  Are you kidding me?

Enjoy.