How dare she....

[amysuemom]

or hypocrisy once again is in the news.

We've all read this story about the mother of octuplets in CA.  How she already had 6 other children and no husband and she's fielding offers from the media and OMG the shame!!!  Yeah. This is the biggest newstory full of what-the fuck-ever I'm reading these days.  I'm not going to claim she's sane, although

Comments

[bernmarx]

However, if her parents are cool with it

Her mother wants to kick her out of the house, and allegedly told her as much before this round of pregnancies; her mother also claims to have gone to a therapist who told her to stop enabling her daughter's pregnancy addiction.

I haven't seen any mention of her father.

[anton_p_nym]

My only objection to this whole "octuplet circus" thing is that the mother showed really, really dubious wisdom in this. She's filed for bankruptcy, had her house foreclosed, may not be currently employed, doesn't have a spousal income to count on, and her parents are going back to work to support her... so she spends money to have a LOT more kids and then yet more money to pay for the NICU stay.

Mainly, it's deep concern for the kids' welfare and her sanity... lesser versions of her story have ended before in ailing children needing intensive medical and psychiatric rehabilitation.

-- Steve does wish that the press would be a bit more discrete about the coverage... but then again multiple births have been media circuses since at least the Dionne Quintuplets. (Also during an economic meltdown, come to think of it.)

[bernmarx]

In this case, though, I'm guessing she WANTS the media circus. I think she's largely counting on the hullaballoo to push up the ticket on a book deal, so she ultimately won't need to worry about taxpayer dollars.

Which is okay. Let the gawkers pay for it. :)

(Language nit, in case it wasn't just a typo: "Discrete" means "with clear boundaries, individualized, separable"; "discreet" means "with a mind towards respecting privacy." Very common mistake.)

[anton_p_nym]

Ah, thanks for the tip; I thought that the two spellings were more examples of the "theater"/"theatre" anglo-american divide and not two, er, discrete words.

-- Steve'll get the hang of this eventually.

[bernmarx]

Personally, I'm sad for the children and question the wisdom of the doctor who apparently implanted more than twice the number of fertilized eggs that would normally have been done. I can't really hate the woman because I think she has a mental problem of some sort that's driving this. Apparently, she wanted to go crazy with the Cheez-Whiz on the implants to increase the chances of having a girl (mission accomplished there, at least

[c1]

My concerns are less about free choice in the matter, and more about what impact her free choices will have on her brood. As has been noted in previous comments, day care professionals go home to de-stress after eight hours on the job. As important, they also have formal training in being a child-care provider in settings where multiple children place multiple stresses (never a linear increase, but an exponential one) on providers

[dda]

The woman made a choice.

No choice is without consequences and what you are seeing are some of the consequences of her "choice." As will be the future health (mental and physical) of all these children. So no, the level of hate isn't stupid; if there were more anger leveled at people who do stupid things, perhaps there would be fewer stupid things done.

[dda]

So, reading some of these responses I see I wasn't clear

[amysuemom]

And um...that was me, pretty plaguey here so not functioning at optimal levels

[dda]

The left is worse...

What? The left (especially the Feminist left) are hypocritical?? Say it's not so! :-P

I wasn't disputing your general comments although I can make a case that the pro-lifers aren't being that inconsistent; there is a difference between getting pregnant accidentally (or "accidentally") and deliberately going through fertility treatments to have yet still more kids.

But as someone else pointed out, 14 kids at once or 14 separate cases of neglect is irrelevant-the foolishness of this one woman doesn't make me want to throw out my personal belief system.

I disagree; edge cases often point out the failure points of a system and this one is clearly (to me) pointing out a failure of the "she can do whatever she wants with her body" belief system. That belief system has many other far-reaching consequences so noting its failures is important. The foolishness of this woman points out that limits and controls are needed and that is a break from a belief system that says no such thing.