Thoughts on the octuplet mother:- She is clearly mentally ill. Very much so.
- If a woman undergoing IVF treatment will not consent to selective reduction, then no more than two embryos* should be allowed to be inserted at a time. That should be a law.
- The doctor committed malpractice and should be responsible for a significant portion of the cost of raising the children, some of which will be seriously disabled.
- I find it difficult to come up with any law outlawing IVF based on financial status or social circumstances that wouldn't be unfair at times. Perhaps the best solution is stigma for the patient and financial penalties for doctors, on a case-by-case basis. Admittedly, that still allows for the (hopefully rare) situation such as the one we're reading about this month.
* or whatever the standard practice allows
posted by Quiddity at 2/14/2009 09:16:00 AM
Octuplet mom is basically symbolic of everything that's wrong in California today - too much, no self-accountability, no oversight.
Yeah, so octo-mom did something stupid and is probably a little loco. You'd think what she did was some great sin against the entire United States of America what with all the attention she's been getting. Even if she's on welfare for the rest of her life, and her kids end up on welfare for the rest of their lives, the total cost wouldn't even approach the cost of one minute of the pointless Iraq war. Yet the defense budget of almost $600 billion passes w/o a word of comment, much less weeks of talk shows and interviews and everyone looking down their noses at this horrible crazy welfare queen mom. The ultimate cost of her folly is chickenfeed compared to obscene bank bailouts, defense expenditures or even campaigns for president. This is all a big to-do about nothing. We should leave the poor crazy woman in peace and stop pretending anyone's morally superior to her.
