You may have read lately about the woman in Las Angeles who just gave birth to octuplets. This raises some interesting ethical questions about reproductive rights. A few facts:
1. The woman, aged 33, already had 6 children
2. Yet she sought invitro fertilization in order to conceive again
3. She is unmarried and does not live with the father of any of her children
4. She and her (now 14 in total) children live in a 3 bedroom house, along with her parents. (Yes, that's 17 people in a 3 bedroom house.)
5. Her father is employed as a contractor in Iraq (and as such is not around much to lend a hand with child-rearing)
6. Despite her father's income, the family filed for bankruptcy last year
7. When told she was carrying 7 children (they didn't find the 8th until the cesarian) and informed of the extreme risks, she was encouraged to reduce the number the foetuses to give the remainder the best possible chance of survival. She refused.
A lot of people are discussing the ethics of implanting multiple embryos in a woman trying to conceive because of the high risk of multiple births, which exponentially increases the risk of various medical complications to both the foetuses and the mother. These are legitemate questions and well worth exploring, but I'm more interested at this point in the financial ethics involved.
Here is a woman who is already unable to afford the 6 children she's got, as evidenced by the bankruptcy report and the fact that she's still living with her parents in a 3-bedroom home. And yet she has fertility treatment to have more kids. (I'd LOVE to know who paid for that. Herself? Insurance? Medicaid?)
Then there's the hundreds of thousands of dollars of hospital expenses for the delivery (7 surgeons and 7 nurses in the delivery room) and all the neonatal treatment. The babies were delivered 9 weeks early, all with extremely low birthweights. All are still too small to be handled, 7 are at least breathing on their own now. Each baby has 2 nurses assigned to it night and day. They will all remain in the hospital for several more weeks. Did I say hundreds of thousands of dollars? Make that millions.
This woman is not paying the hospital expenses on her own, clearly. Either she's on medicaid (goverment-provided medical care for extremely low-income people), in which case the taxpayers are paying for all this, or she's got insurance, in which case all the other people who also happen to have their insurance with the same company are picking up the tab in the form of their monthly premiums. Regardless, none of them got a say in how many kids this woman has.
Then there's the food stamps she'll almost certainly need to feed them all. Then there's the cost of education, which is likely to be much higher than the national per-student average. Why? Because babies born with such low birthweight have a very high likliehood of having physical and learning developmental difficulties, possibly severe ones.
Ultimately, it comes to this:
Is reproduction an absolute right, to be undertaken by any individual regardless to the cost of society, or if society must help bear the cost of raising the children, does society therefore get some say into how many children are created, and by whom?
If so, who decides these questions, and with what criteria?
On you marks...
get set...
...comment!
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6 comments:
I'm not going to waffle, it's as simple as this: If you want to be part of society you have to behave responsibly.
This behaviour is irresponsible; costs the taxpayer and serves no benefit. I fail to see how any of the fourteen will be given sufficient time and appropriate nurturing to develop into productive adults (although I'm sure a lucky one or two will make something of themselves).
With the hugely complex societies we have today prospective parents have a duty to ensure they have adequate resource for each child they plan to have.
Reproduction is an absolute right
However, If you decide to reproduce you must take into account how you are going to look after your babies/issue/litter etc
I have a female Doberman, I let her have a season,her first one It was a total nightmare, I could not let her out of my sight and had to keep her on a long rope
I wasnt going to take the chance that she would meet some mongrel or even another male dog of any pedigree because A I didnt have the space to have her puppies with ease , B I didnt have the money to allow her to have puppies, and C even if I had let her have one litter it would have exhausted me I didnt have the support to be able to take care of those puppies properly. I then waited until after she had finished her season and had her spayed (hysterectomy and ovaries removed) because I didnt want the hassle nor did I want to sell puppies nor did I want to pay stud fees for a Doberman pedigree Dog to come and impregnate her.
This woman has been irresponsible and in times gone by she would have had her babies taken away from her and she would have been locked away in an asylum
Thats what used to happen, Unmarried mothers used to be either committed or have backstreet abortions
We are a bit more nicer these days but that comes with our lifestyle
We feel that everyone has the same start in life thing is if you cant afford to have children why have them? Some people do it and then regret the decision for the rest of their lives and end up as bad mothers and the cycle perpetuates.
She should have A) either aborted some, B if she wasnt going to abort to have some of them put up for adoption,
The fact that she is already struggling to have six children clothed and fed (the last two of whom are twins aged 2) makes this an even more stupid proposition.
As I said before what the hell was she thinking of?
Repopulating the neighbourhood with her genes?
Its craziness personified. She could never have delivered them safely and alive if she had carried them to term or if she was in the countryside miles from anywhere.
Who decides, Certainly not the government, and Britain has a high rate of teenage pregnancy but no one gives a toss
We dont care anymore
Its become a free for all and its becoming a nightmare.
Once the oil goes, babies and the birthrate are going to go up
people will have nothing better to do
Stop me Im going into one of my rants
Its irresponsible of her to do this
She will have to regret what ever happens and the children will suffer as a result.
Over 6 billion souls on this planet and they just keep growing more of them
Mankind has moved away from natural selection and so these issues will become more prevalent. My personal and simplistic view is that no-one should bring children into the world (by whatever method!) unless they can afford to. I don't mean rich, I mean prepared to work to keep themselves and their children and cover all basic needs. The welfare state or iquivalent is there for when things go pearshaped, which can happen to anyone of us.
For what it's worth my opinion is: IVF should always be paid for by the individual(s) - it is not an innate right and only offered to the childless.
Reproduction is a right. It is also a responsibility. And if you can't field that responsibility, give your children to someone who can...
My real problem is-why are you having invitro when you are single and at home with that many kids already - needing the child welfare checks? I don't get it.
Any resposible person would have given the multiple kids up for adoption to good homes - OK any responsible person wouldn't have had multiple fertilization to begin with. If people have to be screened for adoption, don't they get screened for this sort of procedure too? You'd think so. Getting invitro is NOT a right in my mind.
Really my main beef is with the the medical professional who did this. Money should not dictate this situation. She should not have had this procedure done. If she is a single mom with 5 kids living at home with here family who had to decalre bankruptcy - THAT is not someone who should abe given a procedure resulting inmultiple children. To me it's no worse off than telling nsomeone you must not have an abourtion and keep all your kids but we have not information to help you live. In this case it was not accidental - it was planned. And these poor kids will suffer the consequences of the mom's selfishness and the medical community's inability to refuse $$. If doctors can refuse patients or refuse surgery to patients due to health or emotional status, why was this not a HUGE red flag?
And really aren't 5 kids enough?
Sheesh. Some people can't have any...
should spellchecked. Sorry...
To all those who suggest that if she didn't want to selectively terminate some of the phoetuses to give the remainder a better shot at survival that she should put them up for adoption, let me say this: these children will be so developmentally stunted it would be very difficult to find homes for them. First and foremost what people want when adopting a baby is a healthy child. It's highly unlikely that any of these children will ever be healthy or mentally normal, having been born SO prematurely. Adoption is not really a viable option in this case.
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