This post could easily share a title with a horror, fantasy, or science-fiction novel. And like those genres, it is about people and events which can never happen – or at least should never happen. The case of Nadya Suleman and her octuplets is like something out of an 80s-era B-movie about aliens, where an unwitting Earth woman is made to serve as some sort of living baby factory. Except that in reality, Nadya was a willing participant.
Let me be clear that any venomous edge or tone to this post is reserved exclusively for Nadya Suleman, not for any of her fourteen children, who are unwitting participants in a profane human experiment. Under normal circumstances, the birth of a child or multiple children should be a celebrated occasion, but all too often where they are unexpected or unwarranted, it becomes a conundrum. Children demand so much time and so many resources that their arrivals should be planned so that they can be properly accommodated. Because this is often not the case, we have a swelling adoption system, an excess of abortions, and/or children raised in unsatisfactory conditions – something that invariably echoes into the future as they become members of society.
For this very reason, Nadya Suleman is a moral deviant. She has not only brought one child into the world under unsatisfactory conditions, but she has brought in eight of them – in fact a brood – merely to satisfy the desire to have more children.
Undoubtedly the birth of the Suleman octuplets was to the applause of many pro-life advocates, but her case also highlights exactly why every pregnancy should be preceded by extensive thought and planning, and why the option for a woman to not follow through to birth must always be available. After all, life is more than a heartbeat and air pumping through the lungs; there must be consideration for quality of life as well.
Even before the inadequate financial circumstances into which Suleman’s children were born, there was the high risk involved with bringing octuplets to term in the first place. History shows that the risk is high, as before Suleman there were seven reported cases of octuplets, each with tragic results.
- September 13 and 16, 2000 – Four boys and four girls born to Mariella Mazzara of Italy. Four died within a month.
- December 8 and 20, 1998 – Six girls and two boys born to Nkem Chukwu of Houston. The smallest died within a week.
- December 5, 1996 – Four boys and two girls born alive to Rosario Clavijo in Spain. Two other fetuses were stillborn.
- September 30 to October 2, 1996 – Six boys and two girls born to Mandy Allwood of England. All died.
- December 20, 1985 – Five boys and three girls born to Sevil Capan of Turkey. All died.
- August 16, 1979 – Five girls and three boys born to Pasqualina Chianese of Italy. Six died within two weeks.
- March 10, 1967 – Four boys and four girls were born to Maria Teresa Lopez de Sepulveda, 21, of Mexico City. All died within 14 hours.
In light of these odds, Nadya Suleman’s actions were so selfish and careless that it can barely be understood, and can truly only be attributed to some sort of psychological malfunction. I am sure it will come out at some point that Ms. Suleman suffers from some obscure disorder, at which point the nation’s shock and awe will necessarily change into at least disgruntled neutrality and perhaps even sympathy.
But she will get no sympathy from me, because outside of whatever psychosis she suffers from, she has showed the clear cognizance and presence of mind to arrange for the national welfare system to support her bizarre pathology, to conduct multiple interviews, and to have a website constructed to exploit people’s concern for her children in order to solicit donations. She was supposedly even in talks to be paid up to $2 million for an interview and to star in her own reality television show. Whatever illness Ms. Suleman may suffer from, it does not seem to have rendered her incompetent, leaving her completely responsible – morally and legally – for her perverse actions.
Although Nadya’s Suleman’s moral compass is clearly off center, the needle also necessarily points to the physician or medical team. He, she, or they – aware of the situation, allowed her to take fertility drugs despite protests by Nadya’s own mother. One can scarcely imagine the flight of judgment required for a highly educated medical professional to condone such a thing, which naturally leads to speculation that there may have been a more sinister motivation behind it. Recent reports indicate that the care Nadya received reached costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Newly grounded from the euphoria of pulling off an octuplet delivery, her medical team is looking expectantly to California’s Medi-Cal system for compensation.
Could the sanctioning of a poor woman taking fertility drugs and subsequently giving birth to eight children really be based on something so trite as personal profit? Or perhaps for the acclaim a hospital would receive in being one of the only hospitals in history to safely deliver octuplets? Either way, there was a major lapse in personal and professional integrity.
For Suleman’s part, she has cashed in – figuratively and literally – on her overnight celebrity, appearing in several interviews to defend her decision. So this was no momentary failure of judgment, but a conscious and sustained commitment to moral bankruptcy. At the same time as she makes the audacious claim that she is not taking advantage of taxpayers, she continues to pull in $500 per month in food stamps, which are of course paid for by taxpayers. While the welfare system is necessarily in place to support the poor and disadvantaged, especially children, it was never intended to support those who would intentionally put themselves in a disadvantaged position.
Any vitriol towards Ms. Suleman has nothing to do with the fact that my taxes are helping to support her deviancy, because her situation has not increased my taxes, and I doubt that even one penny from my income goes directly to her. And I completely support the welfare system, in spite of the fact that my family managed through poverty without it. I would even see it expanded, if it ensured that the poor and disadvantaged were provided some relief.
Most people participating in the system – exceptions made for other exploitative deviants like Ms. Suleman – are in genuine need, and it is because of that need that I have no objections to contributing to that system. Ms. Suleman, in creating her need voluntarily, is taking from those who find themselves at an unexpected disadvantage. That she would deny that this is the case, and that she would be unrepentant, only compounds upon her disgrace. That she gave birth to eight children she cannot support is a problem in itself, but that she has no concept or conscience of how she affects others is completely unacceptable. It only becomes a greater trangression when we consider the state of the U.S. economy, and that the needs of the legitimately disadvantaged have only increased.
Things only get worse when we consider that more than half the world’s population lives in absolute poverty. In very few places, and perhaps only in the United States, can – or would - a person willfully subject themselves and their children to poverty, and then look expectantly to the rest of the world with an open hand. In most cases, with poverty comes humility, and reservations about receiving aid from others. The people of the world’s poorest countries eke out a living as best they can with what little they have, and are invariably grateful – never expectant – for those who assist them.
Nadya Suleman is not only ungrateful – for the privilege of living in a country where her situation is even possible – she is indifferent to the fact that there are those who are suffering around her, and in the world at large. This becomes clear in how she has embraced her sudden fame, making a public spectacle of herself and her children, even having the audacity to hire a publicist, as if to formally legitimize her celebrity status.
Reports are coming in that Ms. Suleman has gone into hiding, due to a number of people making threats towards her and her children. She has allegedly checked into a hotel, leaving her publicist to interface with the public. The welfare system does not cover the fees for a publicist, nor does it cover hotel costs. Word also has it – and picture evidence affirms – that she had some sort of plastic surgery performed on her face. Yet she has had to rely welfare system and the donations of strangers for support. The people who have offered or made donations to the Suleman brood almost certainly did it for the sake of her children, and considering her need. They probably did not – do not – intend to fund her public relations campaign.
It is not only a physical problem, as Nadya Suleman takes from the collective mouth of the poor, and the hand of the generous, but an ideological one, as she strengthens the case of those who criticize the welfare system as one of waste and excess.
It is for these reasons that Nadya Suleman – and the medical professionals who have explicitly endorsed her deviancy – are deserving of any vitriol that comes their way. Instead of her actions being celebrated in the media, they should be examined by a mental health professional, and on proof of competence, examined in a criminal context.
Whatever the outcome of the situation, however, it is important to separate the Suleman children from the indiscretions of their mother, and proceed in matter that protects and provides for them as new members of society. Even if it means their mother is deemed unfit – all evidence seems to point to this – and that they need to be placed in another’s care.
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