A 33-year-old Califonia woman: Poster child for IVF?

Or a poster child--with a lot of kids--for why assisted conception technologies are actually the best idea since seeding farm fields with abandoned land mines. At least, this AP news report points to a real ethical problem with "in-vitro" or other assisted reproduction techniques.

"Grandma: Octuplets mom obsessed with having kids"

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OCTUPLETS?SITE=MAQUI&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

This is a case of the mother really, really wanting to have children since she was a teenager. She now has 14, including eight all at once in this last batch. A lot of work? You bet! I guess she and hubby will have their hands full caring for these new little additions...oh...wait a minute...you are telling us that the mother, Nadya Suleman, is NOT MARRIED and never has been?? She is also infertile and had to use IVF and a sperm donor to "produce" any of them? So Granny (her mother) has been helping her out?

How nice of her. However, it seems that "Mommy's Little Helper" has had it, and warned her...

Angela Suleman told The Associated Press she was not supportive when her daughter, Nadya Suleman, decided to have more embryos implanted last year.

"It can't go on any longer. She's got six children and no husband. I was brought up the traditional way. I firmly believe in marriage. But she didn't want to get married."

Apparently the message did not get through, one sent by both her mother AND her doctors:

There were frozen embryos left over after her previous pregnancies and her daughter didn't want them destroyed, so she decided to have more children.

Her mother and doctors have said the woman was told she had the option to abort some of the embryos and, later, the fetuses. She refused.

So rather than the Kaiser Permanente doctors telling this artificially-enhanced "fertile Mrytle the Turtle" there are options that would NOT have destroyed the blastocycts (very early cell balls that become the eventual child if the pregnancy is successful)--like donating the embryos to OTHER infertile women for implantation--and making her "give in" by being sure to not pay the bills if she went ahead anyway (use the economic pressure Kaiser could), what happened? The remaining frozen embryos were then ALL implanted at the same time. Unfortunately, they all "took" and then some (there were actually fewer embryos which then multiplied!) yet she refused to "reduce" the number of fetuses by early abortion.

The result? Eight children who are reported to be "healthy". However, since humans are NOT intended to have litters, never mind ones of a size that would be really problematical if the family dog had that many at once...

[H]er newborns [are expected to remain hospitalized] for at least a month.

A spokeswoman at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center said the babies were were progressing daily, with all eight breathing unassisted and being tube-fed.

Healthy? Maybe against some preemies (premature babies), but way too small to even feed on their own.

And when they are? Seems that Nadya--who loves kids so much she had her own elementary school full--may well see the flip side of this "Brady Bunch on steroids": The work load of caring for 14 children, NONE of whom are really old enough to do the work (the oldest is seven) is going to be brutal without Granny to help out:

While her daughter recovers, Angela Suleman is taking care of the other six children, ages 2 through 7, at the family home in Whittier...

She said she warned her daughter that when she gets home from the hospital, "I'm going to be gone."

And how is Nadya Suleman going to be able to support all the kids? Not that she lacks credentials to get a good job:

Yolanda Garcia, 49, of Whittier, said she helped care for Nadya Suleman's autistic son three years ago.

"From what I could tell back then, she was pretty happy with herself, saying she liked having kids and she wanted 12 kids in all.

She told me that all of her kids were through in vitro, and I said 'Gosh, how can you afford that and go to school at the same time?"' she added. "And she said it's because she got paid for it."

Garcia said she did not ask for details.

Hmm...

Nadya Suleman holds a 2006 degree in child and adolescent development from California State University, Fullerton, and as late as last spring she was studying for a master's degree in counseling, college spokeswoman Paula Selleck told the Press-Telegram.

Fitting emphasis in her studies, I must admit. But note that she has been doing all that studying while caring for her then-family, including an autistic child! We can guess why Granny is fed up: She's doing all the scut work while her little girl is getting knocked-up artificially and studying, making whoopee, and making babies.

Busy lady. Too bad that her activities don't seem to include earning a living: Note she did not tell even her friend how she earns the family keep, although there is a name on some of the birth certificates listing a David Solomon as the father; she declines to name the sperm donor.

Let's look at this one:

She named some schmuck she was apparently was "getting jiggy" with as the father of some of the kids. Yet she apparently did not tell him she cannot get preggie naturally so he would believe that he was the father. Therefore child support is no doubt a partial source of income from him and whomever was the other guy in line.

Mother no doubt is another source of aid since the story hints that the "family home" is hers.

She might also have gotten some sort of stipend from the University as a graduate assistant (which never is enough to really support even ONE person).

Yet, with as many kids as she had even before this last "herd", is that going to add up to enough? Not likely since none of those sources would be enough to truly support the young fatherless family in the absence of a fat family trust account; there is no indication of great wealth. That means what is feared--her going on public assistance--may well have happened already. Even if by some miracle it hasn't, it will be inevitable there will be public support needed should Mommy actually grow a pair of brass ones and ditch the "co-dependent" as she has threatened to.

These days, children are taken away from parents for lousy reasons if any at all. That brings up this concern:
Why haven't the child welfare authorities in California intervened to take those kids away from a clearly incompetent mother who has to be nuttier than a Christmas fruitcake? A mother who never could have had them naturally and will NOT marry.

C'mon now, whether one is liberal or conservative, this one, IMHO, is a no-brainer in favor of having the authorities act. Indeed, how can it be possible that a bitch who will apparently soon have no visible means of assistance she can call upon to properly care for the little rascals she has be considered even remotely competent as a parent? And would remain just as wacked-out nutso incompetent even if the worst happens and none of the newborns survive?

IMHO, Nadya the Locoweed is not the kind of mother anyone should want raising kids.