When should Fertility treatments be denied?

This is in light of the recent information about the young woman who gave birth to Octuplets, yet already has 6 children at home under age 7, including two sets of twins.
www.cbsnews.com...

When should medical professionals intervene, and say enough is enough?
The woman is said to live with her parents in a neighborhood of two and three bedroom homes while her husband serves in Iraq.
Where I live, social services would not even allow her to live in such small quarters with six children, let alone another eight.
Considering the fact they already had six children, WHY would they have more fertility treatments ( No proof, but obvious)?
Did her and her husband receive any type of counseling about this birth or was this just a way of experimenting on the part of the doctors and hospital involved.
Perhaps they are just Seeking their own reality show.
"Hello, this is TLC calling.."

reply to post by AccessDenied


That is a very good question as it seems that this woman is a "Baby collector" of some kind or another.

My gut instinct is to say "never" though... there is always the potential to have this abused by people who will say that the person seeking the treatment is too youg/old/gay/wrong ethnicity/too many kids already.

Some people who have kids, even if they can afford them and may be in a "Stable" traditional relationship, are just greedy IMO.

It never fails to amaze me though, that adoption requirements are so stringent (for good reason) and some deserving parents have to wait for years, or even are prevented from adopting if their marraige isn't politically correct, but unfit people can and do have natural children without any regard.

When should fertility treatments be denied?

I don't lend my personal support to fertility treatments in any situation; with that said, I view it as a matter of personal liberty. If an individual is capable of providing a healthy home for a child (or, as is often the case, children), I don't believe anyone has a right to prevent them from taking a legal route to parenthood.

Let's review the situation, shall we? The mother is residing with her parents, her husband is at war, she has six young children already, she is (according to the report) rather young herself, and she opted to receive further fertility treatments to add to her brood. I have a few questions: how did she finance this? Anyone who receives fertility treatments will tell you that it is a remarkably expensive undertaking. Are her parents footing the bill? The article notes that the area of residence is comprised of two- and three-bedroom homes, so where on earth are they keeping fourteen children and three adults? The entire situation is just bizarre. Any doctor must be out of his mind to have accepted her petition for fertility treatments .

reply to post by paperplanes


I wonder if the doctor even knew what was going on?

This story is indeed very odd... I am starting to wonder if it may be a hoax on some level... I think it happened before, with one reported case of octuplets.

What gives people the position to judge other people based on statistics like where they live or how many children they have? This is ridiculous.

And about that guy saying people who have kids are greedy, in what way exactly? For now I'll have to disagree with you there since I see it as being pretty selfless.

A follow-up story from CBSNews: Octuplets' Family Filed For Bankruptcy

I don't know, this story is just too much.

I have some problems with IVF anyway (actually my problem is mostly with people who think having children is a right and argue that they are being denied their rights by being infertile).

In this case: there is no father mentioned – the father mentioned in other stories who's going back to Iraq as a soldier seems to be the woman's father – the octuplets' grandfather.

I hope they figure out how she got pregnant (the grandmother says IVF, but they haven't named a doctor or clinic apparently). I don't think this should have happened, and I can't help but suspect that there is some sort of abuse/control thing going on.

A couple of other links:
www.abcnews.go.com...

The woman's mother, Angela Suleman, told the Los Angeles Times that her daughter had indeed undergone fertility treatments and that the embryos were implanted last year. According to Suleman, when the woman learned that she was carrying multiple babies, she opted not to reduce the number of embryos.

ABC News' Mike Von Fremd visited the home of the woman, who lives with her parents on a quiet cul-de-sac in the Los Angeles suburbs. With none of the typical joyful markings of a new arrival -- balloons, storks, flowers -- visible, the family and most immediate neighbors wanted nothing to do with the media.

"Do us a favor, give us our privacy and get out, shame on you, shame on you," a man from inside the house screamed at Von Fremd.

Outside the family's home, bikes and toddler toys were scattered across the front yard. Neighbors told ABC News that the woman is a single mother in her thirties who already has six other children. It appears the family will live in a three-bedroom house bursting with babies when the octuplets are released from the hospital in an estimated two months.

*****************************************************

I stand corrected, that it is the Woman's FATHER not the babies father, headed back to Iraq.

CBS) CBS News has learned that the family of the octuplets born this week outside Los Angeles filed for bankruptcy and abandoned a home a little over a year-and-a-half ago.

Early Show national correspondent Hattie Kauffman says the mother is in her mid-thirties and lives with her parents.

There's been no mention of the octuplets' father, Kauffman observes.

The grandfather, she adds, is apparently going to head back to his native Iraq to earn money for the growing family. He told CBS News he's a former Iraqi military man.

www.cbsnews.com...

I am sure when she went in for treatment she was not expecting 8 more. Most people only have one.

Ama

reply to post by amatrine

when the woman learned that she was carrying multiple babies, she opted not to reduce the number of embryos.

see the rest of my post above.

Originally posted by Sara1
What gives people the position to judge other people based on statistics like where they live or how many children they have? This is ridiculous.

And about that guy saying people who have kids are greedy, in what way exactly? For now I'll have to disagree with you there since I see it as being pretty selfless.

What gives the position for someone to voice their opinion?
I heard on the news that this woman is on welfare, so if that is true, then I can judge all I want. Well, really I can judge anyways. I have that right.

And she had the embroys emplanted!! WHY???

The 33-year-old Southern California woman who gave birth to octuplets this week has six other children and never expected to have eight more when she took fertility treatment, her mother said.

Suleman said her daughter had embryos implanted last year, and after finding out she was pregnant with multiple babies was given the option by doctors of selectively reducing the number of embryos. The woman declined.

www.nbclosangeles.com...

Also, it is not known who the father is!

The mother's father is a contractor who travels back and forth from Iraq. It's not known if she has a husband or boyfriend.
www.nbclosangeles.com...

So whomever said her husband is in Iraq, that is not her husband, its her father!

From the doctor:

"Who am I to say that six is the limit?" said Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, medical director of Fertility Institutes, which has clinics in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and New York City. "There are people who like to have big families."

Dr. James Grifo, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the NYU School of Medicine, added: "I don't think it's our job to tell them how many babies they're allowed to have. I am not a policeman for reproduction in the United States. My role is to educate patients."

Oh sorry to the person who started this thread. I didnt read the full thread first. I think I repeated much of what you said.

[edit on 30-1-2009 by inked up]

Is no one else hearing alarm bells going off?

A woman, apparently living with her parents, has now borne 14 children in under eight years?

Does this not sound like a potential abuse scenario?

There is a clinic out there that is showing some remarkable lack of ethics.

I'm sure that all the rest of the clinics are going to be super happy when new regulations come in because of their inability to use thought.

[edit on 2009/1/30 by Aeons]

reply to post by paperplanes


Triacare, you see that means you me and any other tax payer in the nation was providing for her "fertility" treatments for free.

If she is a military Dependant occurs.

Her husband gets additional money for each child Dependant while in the service, all medical care and expenses free.

So at the end the tap goes to all of us the tax payers.

She could be living in a big house pay by the military with all those children, but many wives opt to stay with parents during times of war or when husbands goes oversea so they can get all the living allowance to themselves

So trust me if she is a military Dependant she is making a killing each month living with mom and dad



[edit on 30-1-2009 by marg6043]

It's her father who is in the military. She is over 30, so she's not a dependent. I wondered about that myself until the article said it was her father, not her husband that was in the military.

reply to post by inked up


Well then is her father the one that is making a killing with having her and her children as Dependant while living in his house.

Sorry I thought that she was a Dependant wife.

[edit on 30-1-2009 by marg6043]

reply to post by marg6043


Her father is a former Iraqi military man, not a former U.S. soldier who fought in Iraq. So I seriously doubt that she's a U.S. military dependent.

According to all the reports I've seen so far, there is no evidence of any other man in her life.

Some fertility clinic directors have been cited speculating that she was impregnated after taking fertility medications without medical supervision, rather than actually undergoing IVF.

reply to post by americandingbat


I see so somebody is scaming the government while having her becoming a breeder and now that the children are born in the US they will get pleanty of money from social services for the care of those children.

You know sometimes I wonder why it can not be laws to take care of scamers and breeders like this one.

I guess this one case may go into investigation.

It looks to me like maybe she's being used as a breeder, yeah

I don't know anything about her citizenship status, or her mother's – her mother could be as American as apple pie, and so could the daughter.

But to have five pregnancies in seven years, and then take fertility drugs to get pregnant yet again, all without an apparent boyfriend/husband, suggests to me that someone's using her body to make a bunch of little American-born babies.

I think their motives are probably more sinister than just scamming the government, but maybe that's my paranoia showing

reply to post by americandingbat


I am with you ADB. This story is unsettling and who is seeking to benefit how is an obvious question. There is no easy logic that would allow for this to be viewed as 'the woman just wanted to have 14 kids and get on with her life'.

And the parents/grandparents filing for bankruptcy before she had all of those embryos implanted and/or took the fertility drugs (there's seems to be conflicting info around that) sets off serious alarm bells to me.

Call me what you want but I still look at infertility as natures way of saying 'this is not for you' in a much kinder way than having you miscarry. This woman is abusing her womb in a horrible way, humans have never been designed to produce offspring like rabbits and other various species.