LOS ANGELES – The Southern California mother of octuplets who already had six other children says she's done having babies. -Well, that's a relief. Good idea.
In an NBC "Dateline" interview aired Tuesday night, 33-year-old Nadya Suleman says the octuplets were a sign from God that she should stop having children. -sign from God? forget signs, most sane people would've stopped before six. and this eight was not really an accident in the first place, either.
Suleman also says she dreams of going back to her old life, before she had the octuplets on Jan. 26 and endured a firestorm of criticism and media frenzy. -sorry, maybe she should have thought about that before she put so many embryos in her body at one time.
Divorced and unemployed, Suleman told anchor Ann Curry that she still intends to go back to school and finish her master's degree. -I'm so glad she has solid plans for caring for all these 'creations' of hers. Children are NOT pets, NOT toys, NOT some fun experiment! They are PEOPLE!
Suleman says she'll support her children with student loans until she can find a job as a counselor after graduating in a year or two. -She wants to BE a counselor? I think she NEEDS one! What form of sanity justifies what she has done? How can she be capable of guiding others when she seems incapable of making decisions that will affect someone besides herself?
Another article says Suleman used IVF from the same clinic for all fourteen of her children. There is also an investigation about what they call a "violation of the standard of care" which involves the number of embryos normally implanted in a woman her age, and I am no physician and do not understand all the things here, but in some ways this legal slight is less important to me than what Suleman has done. I wonder if she ever stopped to consider the true possibilities. Did she consider her other children? The Dateline show I saw interviewed her other children, and all of the ones old enough to speak voiced concerns about having enough room in the house, about not wanting that many babies, how it would be crowded and noisy, and not to mention they suddenly must share half the time they already would get from their mother with all the new siblings. Then there's the fact that one of the children is already autistic, and because the octuplets were born so early (as happens with this many babies) there is a good chance at least one will have cerebral palsy, maybe more. I wonder if Suleman has ever seen a child with cerebral palsy? How can you know that risk, the many risks of this, and still decide to try it just so you don't waste some extra embryos? How can you imagine that being a single mother with fourteen children and no job is a good situation or scenario to raise those children in? Being a single mother with no job is a difficult situation to raise one child, much less fourteen. Did she ever stop to think about the ramifications for those children's physical and emotional needs? Food, insurance, all the things they'll need going to school and growing up? Did she forget they are people, that they need love, nurture, encouragement, so they can grow to be positive influences in the world? Did she consider how they might feel if she did this? Who was she thinking about when she said sure lets not waste embryos, throw 'em all in! Then she says she wants to be a counselor. I cannot fathom that. Far be it from me to judge, I do not know this woman and where she is from, but it looks like a selfish move to me, looks like maybe she could only think that she could find love from children because if they were hers they would have to love her, which is something that happens a lot in teenage pregnancies, or maybe she just wanted to be sensational.
I guess I really don't know what is going on here, but I am disturbed by the story and how the mother seems to consider it some fun game, presents herself to the media as not taking this seriously or having not taken this seriously, not considered the ramifications of her actions, and I believe we have the right to do harm to ourselves and make stupid decisions, but when we fail to consider the grave impacts we make on others with our stupidity and lack of thinking, when we forget to consider that even children are people too, there I think we have made a serious mistake.
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