Saturday, January 31, 2009

Were fertility treatments necessary?

I was reading the St. Petersburg Times this morning, and do agree that it is a wonderful paper. There was an article on the lady who just gave birth to octuplets. After having had triplets, it is hard to imagine being humanely able to carry that many babies. I just can't imagine. Now that they are here, it's difficult to imagine caring for them, as feeding and caring for triplets took 22 hours out of every day for me until the triplets were 18 months old. It was beyond a full-time job, not to mention the cost of their diapers, formula, clothes, et cetera. I was happy for the new parents until I read the paper today. The mother is UNMARRIED. Raising 8 babies will require more than 1 person. Why would a doctor put a 33 year old woman through aggressive fertility treatments when she has no husband? As an aside, I do understand single women who want a baby. I do not blame them, and I am not sure that they should be denied the chance of having one, but fertility is a science, and doctors do control how many embryos are placed in the uterus when they do IVF. I know because this is how we have our triplets.

But this story has more... the mother of the EIGHT new babies, is an unmarried, divorced mother of SIX who lives with her parents in their 1550 square foot house. Her mother filed for bankruptcy a year ago. This is not a single woman who always desired children but never married. This is a mother of SIX, ages 2 to 7, who now has EIGHT more babies to take care of without a husband. That is where I question the doctor's judgement? In all things, our answers lie in the Bible. Period.
But my questions are:
-Should a divorced mother of 6 be allowed to pursue fertility treatments?
-Should a woman with six children and without a job (I am not sure she was working) be allowed to go through IVF?
-Should the doctors have been so aggressive?
-At what point are we birthing babies simply to break a record, yet without the ability to care for them?
The article said the mother just loves children. I understand; I do, too. I just wonder at what point responsibility was forgotten. What are your thoughts?

4 comments:

Tammy Ma said...

hey ann........ good article, I thought you were too gracious though, ha. Difficult questions. Who determines the guidelines for IVF? It's hard to expect a govt or people to adhere to moral ethics, when they don't have that Biblical grounding. At the very least, maybe there could be some kind of psychological screening? Anyway....good article.

Anonymous said...

Good blog AH - I saw this article in the N&O and was perplexed by the ethical decisions made in this situation. Would an adoption agency allow a single mother of six living with her parents to adopt 8 children? No - because we all know that it would not be in the best interest of the children. Was this fertility clinic thinking about the unborn children's best interest?

Preppy Pettit said...

Wow. How will she keep her sanity? As a mother of twins....um no. Not fair to those kids. I hope she proves me wrong.

Anonymous said...

i've been reading people's comments in many newspapers about this situation. it's radical how the opinions vary on this. many people are strictly for freedom of choice. of course as americans, that is a right that we expect. we can't tell this woman what to do however we can have opposing viewpoints on her thought process in electing to bring 14 children into this over populated world. the one point i must make towards those that favor pro-life, you-can-do-what-you-like in the US opininators is that this woman's mother is completely opposed to her daughter's decision and told the press, 'i will be gone when they come home from the hospital'. this statement says a whole lot about her daughter's craziness for multiple kids and shows the depths of disappointment (and possibly despair) that this woman's parents are going through.