These Californian Octuplets

Yeah, it's stupid/misguided/harmful, but I don't understand your desire to interfere. People should be free to do all kinds of retarded things.

In this case she sounds crazy, and if she was trying for her 14th in vitro child, I can see some situation where the doctors should be able to refuse to help her get pregnant; for the good of the rest of her children or whatever. But if it had simply been a matter of a woman with six kids wanting to have a seventh, only to discover it was octuplets, I think it would be jumping the gun to call that pathological.

I also think it's just as wrongheaded to suggest we should put a law on a woman's body limiting the number of children she can have as it is to make one denying her right not to have one when she gets pregnant.

So you didn't know she wasn't married, didn't know she already had six kids, and didn't know they were all in vitro- and you still were irked by the woman? For what? The audacity of her ovaries?

I agree that there ought to be thought given to what kind of life these children are going to have. An adoption agency will interview and screen potential parents before granting them a child. But somehow, no such restrictions apply for fertility doctors.

For some reason, people think that anything that involves actual pregnancy is natural childbirth, no matter how much medical interference and chemical enhancement is involved. A medical procedure that induces pregnancy should be treated just like any adoption.

Of course, that will never happen, because American culture is fucking insane when it comes to reproduction.

Is that really where the problem with overpopulation stems from, though? How many people having too many children are doing it through in vitro?

Granted, I know very little about this stuff; but it seems to me the main result of that would be to make people with fertility problems jump through even more hoops to have a kid.

Exactly. And believe me it's not a buncha fun to go through the hoops that exist already. Being diagnosed as an infertile couple is a very stressful and painful process. We should be doing everything we can to make access to treatment and psychological counseling easier not harder. And it really shouldn't be made harder because some dipshit woman with OCD. She's not the norm nor should she even be talked about in reference to fertility treatments.

The problem is that by stopping THIS woman through a large scale initiative or law change you do make it harder for the rest of us. The psychological testing should have weeded her out but it didn't either because the testing is too lax or she's smart enough to manipulate the system. Having been through the psychological process (at least here in Canada) I'm going to go with manipulation of the system. You can't start making things even more difficult for people who really need this sort of thing because someone has worked the system. Someone will always find a way to work the system and the guidelines will continue to tighten until no one can use fertility treatments unless they are picture perfect in the eyes of some faceless bureaucrat who only judges them based on random criteria set up to prevent people crashing the system. ie kind of like Employment Insurance or Welfare

It's horrible, I agree, that this woman will become the face of fertility treatments but she's an extreme and should be treated as such. She needs to be held responsible as an individual not as a user of the fertility treatment.

I don't want to cast aspersions on anybody's life decisions, but I've never really understood the desperation on so many couple's parts to undergo fertility treatment.

I'm not asking this question to be confrontational, I just really want to know. And Ryan, since you seem to have gone through it, maybe you can give me a better answer than most:

Why, when there are so many children out there waiting for adoption, is it so imperative that you make new ones? Is it just instinct that drives people to make certain that their children are products of their own loins? Do people facing infertility ever even consider adoption, or is it out of the question?

I ask because my wife and I long ago decided not to have children. She got her tubes tied, partly because there's a history of mental illness in her family, and also because we felt that if were to have children, adoption would be a perfectly reasonable route. In the end, we decided to sidestep children altogether, but even when we were considering it, we never felt it was particularly important that they be biologically ours.

But held responsible how? That's the thorny part. Unless she's actually endangering or neglecting these kids (and how could she not be neglecting them? She's one person with 14 kids.), there's not a lot of legal precedent to rely on.

And of course it's not a matter of fertility treatment at all. I knew a girl in high school who now has 11 children (by now it could be 42; I haven't heard anything about her in a while), and they were all made the old-fashioned way. Obsessive baby manufacturing is what it is, regardless of the methodology.

She's being held responsible in the sense that she is now a single person with 14 kids. That's probably punishment enough; no need for the government to get involved.

The problem, of course, is that she's too stupid to realize how fucked she is.

"The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few...
...or the one."

Y'all would hate The Miracle of Morgan's Creek.

If you thought this story was already crazy, buckle up because it just hung a hard left into a wall of stupid:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/lif...cle5627531.ece

hey, California is bankrupt enough, might as well give her more of that government money! maybe she'll get a bail out.

So now she thinks that having a uterus like a clown car makes her a parenting expert, and that people will pay to hear what she thinks.

Of course. Why not?

As we've seen with prescription drug abuse and rampant plastic surgery, you can find a doctor who will do just about anything. The lack of professional ethics in the medical community is shocking.

All good questions, Greg, and they are all asked during the psychological testing done here in Canada. (For the record, our issue was azospermia caused by a genetic micro-deletion, essentially I am genetically incapable of producing sperm)

We did consider adoption but ruled it out for a number of reasons. First was that most babies available for adoption in Alberta through the government are Aboriginal. Neither my wife or I feel comfortable raising a child of a different race. There's a psychological culture gap that happens in children raised by parents of a different race. It's also why we didn't consider international adoption.

Secondly, we would have no control over pre-pregnancy or pre-natal care. There's a handful of really horrible things that can occur if the mother doesn't care for herself or the baby. I'm not just talking FAS or FAE, look up Neural Tube Defects. It's a potential risk when mothers aren't on folic acid. Gruesome, horrifying stuff.

Third was cost. Since we ruled out governmental adoption we would have had to go with an private adoption which in Alberta can run anywhere between 10 and 100 thousand. Compare that 750 dollars for a vial of sperm and a 1 in 6 shot of succesful implantation and you see why we chose donor.

Fourth was genetics. I married my wife with every intention of raising her children. I thought her genetics would make for some potentially cool kids. She thought mine would as well. Turns out we only get to find out half of that equation but still why not at least try.

She sent her parents into debt, too? Jesus. I don't envy the oldest of the previous six kids, in a few years he/she is either off to work to help pay for his/her mother's selfish ways, or is going to be caught up raising the new batch alongside mom.

I mean, it's not like we're living in a time, at least in this country, where we need 14 kids just to make sure we have some that survive long enough to til the fields.

Say what you will about the Duggars, but at least they have, like, jobs and didn't splurge for the whole meal in one sitting.

Is it going too far to state that some people need to be kicked off the planet?

There's too many people as it is--we're fucking ourselves to extinction. The thing is that sex is fun, hence the abundance of people.

This nutcase is another story entirely, though. She's a leech, the parasite of society bent on ushering destruction as fast as her uterus will allow. She willingly has herself fertilized in the hopes of having a shitload of kids, all while single even, and now she expects everyone else to pay their living expenses.

They should take her children away as it is VERY obvious she has mental problems and is unfit to raise ANY number of children.

Her vagina should be filled with concrete and these kids should be taken away from her.

Wow, just wow. As someone who helps take care of up to four kids under 2 in a day. This woman is clearly nuts.

I'm sorry to hear about that Ryan, it seems that the couples that deserve children can't have them, and the people that don't even deserve to own a gold fish have 8 or 9. Fucked up and sad.

Irresponsible, disgusting, and flat-out DUMB. What kind of life are these children going to have? And I'm not just talking financially. The woman is clearly off her fucking rocker if she thinks that having a billion kids is going to fill whatever void is in her life. If she's this irresponsible with her own body, just imagine how she's going to be with 14 fucking kids under one roof.

Her parents should have taken her to the Maury show before this shit got out of hand.

As I suggested earlier, fill her void with concrete and we're making some progress.

We will never see birth control of any form imposed on individual people, nor will any meaningful social or education programs be implemented to discourage irresponsible births, and no politician will ever intelligently and honestly raise the subject of unsustainable population/birth rates during our lifetimes. At least not in any westernized democracy, or any country of meaningful size.

You all can count on this. The subject is simply too "icky" for most people to consider. It infringes upon too many liberties folks hold dear. It will be our children/grandchildren/great-grandchildren who will deal with the fact that their predecessors found it too distasteful and taboo to rationally discuss how many humans the earth can sustain. This woman's personal lunacy and horrible, horrible life choices (that other citizens will have to bear financial responsibility for) are the merest tip of a six billion person iceberg.

I'm not even sure there is a way to approach the issue that isn't horrible distasteful. I know I find the idea of the state dictating personal life decisions on child-rearing to be repugnant. But why isn't any effort directed towards education? On responsible birth control? On the sheer economic reality of raising children?

Please tell me they're not going to leave 14 children in the custody of this loon.

Good post Overlord.

At the very least, the doctors directly involved shouldn't be working. Ever again.
Isn't it a form of malpractice? Sorry if it's been brought up, I didn't read the whole thread.

That's awesome.

Can't she be sectioned, as she's clearly a loon?
(...and by sectioned I don't mean being slammed in a psych-ward, but more like what happened to that horse in 'The Cell'.)

She immediately asked for millions of dollars to do "appearances" and for freebies from major corporations. I think it'd be safe to say that she had financial gain on her mind the entire time. She watched other multiple births be showered with gifts and felt that if she had a dozen kids, they'd give her free stuff too.

She also immediately hired a publicist. This is not the behavior of a mom. It's the behavior of someone who wants to exploit the situation to get famous and rich.

My cat had 'almost' that many kittens...am I doing this wrong?
I held hope that Oprah would turn-up (hence the axe by the frontdoor).

Yikes!!! Please explain???

It's an art piece done to explore the idea of human/canine genetic cross-breeding. I can't remember the artist.

Thanks. We had a bit of a time with it but we had a daughter nine months ago thanks to fertility options and I wouldn't trade her for the world.

And I couldn't agree more with the last part of your post.

I've never seen that piece before, but I love it. I can't stop looking at it, actually. If I were an art collector with way too much money on my hands...

oh...well a late congrats! she's one lucky girl to have parents such as yourselves!

I like to think there's an entire "Dr. Moreau Manimal whelp" series available at those mall Tchotchke-collection-behind-glass stores.



EDIT: http://www.patriciapiccinini.net/ "Gathering" is a pretty freaky little short.

Her thoughts on her work.

Hey everybody, now you can help her support these kids! She's set up a website accepting donations.

How much do I have to donate so I can kick her in the crotch?

Online donations? What happened to the days when a single mother who needed money would just prostitute herself? This country's going to hell.

I have no problem calling this lady crazy. She's totally and utterly batshit insane and deserves any and all scorn thrown her way.

Now, I do have a problem with a wider issue raised in this thread about reproductive rights and personal responsibility. I say if a person wants a huge family and is capable of supporting them physically, financially and emotionally (something I think Crazy Von Preggo's isn't capable of) how can a society justify imposing "limits" on reproduction?

Now, I'm not a "everything is a slippery slope" kind of guy but in this case I am wary at what it could lead down the road. The last thing I want to do is put issues like these in the hands of politicians. Let's address unwanted pregnancies, access to comprehensive sex education, the availability of contraception and medical ethics before we start throwing around population sustainability as a reason to limit reproduction.

She was just on the news here as well. I had never seen first person up until now. What an unequivocally sad, delusional and borderline criminal person she is. "It doesn't matter that I have 14 fucking small kids. Because I will love them and I will devote myself to them and I will feed them with lembas bread I will pull out of my clown-car of a vagina. Please donate." She shouldn't be allowed to have even a single kid.

I've looked all over that site and I can't find a way to give her a clue.