printI’ve been able to avoid commenting on the curious case of Rod Blagojevich, the creepy politician who’s been singled out for special attention by an equally creepy media and Blagojevich’s crooked peers.
I see I’ll not be spared the scourge of single mother, Nadya Suleman—the interest in the woman who gave birth to octuplets in California last week is simply too great. Suleman, 33, “already had six children before giving birth on Monday,” and now has 14 kids below the age of eight.
The public might not be too enamored of Suleman, or support her plans to hawk these poor mites on Oprah, reports the Times of London, since,
“Many have asked how an unemployed single mother can raise 14 children, as her first six have already strained the family budget.”
And:
“Experts believe that the unnamed fertility specialists who gave her in vitro fertilisation (IVF) should not have implanted so many embryos.”
Does the Times mean to imply that if the insane sow Suleman had been implanted with, say, four embryos only the dilemma would be no longer?
Talk about asking the wrong questions.
The question a moral society would ask is this:
How does an unmarried, unemployed ho, with iffy finances, and no partner, get fertilized again and again with potential children?
Under libertarian law, such transactions, of course, would not be banned. Since a welfare society would cease to exist, the incentives to manufacture these mites would diminish. One can trust accredited, professional, medical societies to police themselves.
And, of course, neither the government nor the market can eliminate a freak head case like Suleman and the odd quack who’d gratify her craven, selfish needs.
The first problem we have is an extant and growing welfare society that encourages and subsidized degrees of depravity (although Suleman is pretty far gone).
The second problem is immorality: A culture in which the consensus keepers refuse to condemn—or allow a condemnation of—laziness, self-indulgence, and lax morality. Look, Angelina Jolie has an unhealthy fetish she indulges: having or acquiring kids. She clearly gets a kick out of popping them out or adopting them. Once they grow into spoilt, insufferable, stupid brats, she’ll be less enamored of them, although still more than able to provide for her brood.
The thing is, Jolie can afford her fetishes; Suleman can’t.
The risky medical procedure, notwithstanding, my favorite octuplets were Anoop, Uma, Nabendu, Poonam, Pria, Sandeep, Sashi, and Gheet. They were born to a celebrity, married couple: Apu and Manjula Nahasapeemapetilon of The Simpsons. Those were octuplets one could get behind.
Update (Feb 2): “Octuplets mom gets TV, book offers” (via Roger).
Is she going to sell her kids? Or are they also seen as a “retirement annuity” like the practice is in my glorious country of South Africa?
I am interested: can she sue the doctors who implanted her for child-support? Wouldn’t THAT have made for great reporting!
Who the hell paid for the IVF? And what sort of idiot physicians do IVF on a woman who already had 6 kids? {{IVF is a sort subject with me anyway since my late wife did 3 tries with 15 eggs and wound up with breast cancer – as did Elizabeth Edwards and other women I know}}.
“Many have asked how an unemployed single mother can raise 14 children, as her first six have already strained the family budget.”
Has anyone asked how she could afford a procedure which costs $10,000-$15,000 per attempt – of which only about a quarter are successful?