wowOwow.com is a party ... disguised as a website. Created, run and written by 16 independent-minded women -- including Candice Bergen, Liz Smith, Whoopi Goldberg, Peggy Noonan, Lesley Stahl and more -- who have been talking to each other for decades. They now want you to join the conversation.
The mother of the world's longest-living octuplets is being deluged with offers for book deals, TV shows and other business proposals. Aside from the media attention and potential income from such, what is the effect on the children? With so many, can parents devote the attention needed for them all individually, and are the older siblings raising the younger ones? Are the parents shirking responsibility and taking away from the older siblings' childhoods? The women of Wowowow.com discuss the implications and responsibilities of having large, multiple births.
Joan Juliet Buck: As long as they aren't selling the kids into slavery I can't object. But anyone who already has five children and seeks fertility treatments isn't reading the instruction book. Fertility treatments are for people who don't have ANY children. All this just seems to be proof that the wrongheaded greed of the past years has extended to the most private recesses of a woman's body.
Liz Smith: I could not express myself more succinctly than the great Joan Juliet "Violet" Buck, but I will add that it seems to me the doctors giving these fertility drugs weren't playing with full decks. Forgive me if I seem brutal, but the "mother" sounds really nuts to me, and I am disgusted by a culture that will reward her with millions of dollars in advertising connections and TV appearances.
One has to try to imagine the "freak show" atmosphere of being one of these children growing up. And if the mother was so desperate to give mothering, there are millions of children already in the world who are starving and need attention. In that, she might strive to be more like Angelina Jolie or Mia Farrow.
This is where science enters Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory and the result is - not good!
Joan Ganz Cooney: To me, having 14 or 18 children, either the old-fashioned way or via in-vitro fertilization, is a form of child abuse. It is manifestly unfair to the children who will never get enough parental attention and love. I don't know what the maximum number of children should be. In some situations, a large family of five or six kids is fine. But add that the woman who just had the octuplets and the doctors responsible for the grotesquery do not have to pay the bills. Those children will have cost the health-care system millions of dollars before this is over and, although we aren't being told about it, you can bet that heroic measures are being taken to save all those children's lives. If they all do survive, some are almost sure to have lifelong medical problems.
As to profiting from these big families, it's fine with me because the money has to come from somewhere to take care of them and I'd prefer it not be from taxpayers.
I would hope that fertility clinics would be regulated by government if they can't regulate themselves. In truth, they seem to have done a pretty good job of self-regulation, so I'd be reluctant to have the government intervene at this time.
Mary Wells: This isn't about babies or children or mother love or an accident of fate or families helping one another. This is about money. Those eggs produced babies and children that will produce income from many sources. Government money is given to individuals. The more children in an application - the more money received from governments. There is an issue of inhumanity here. I would guess there are years and years ahead of problems for these children. We can't do much about that - we already have so many children that need our help in this world. And our resources are disappearing. But we don't have to buy the books or watch the TV shows or even talk about those books and shows, thereby making the books and TV shows income producing. In my mind, having babies you can't handle or give healthy futures to when you have so many in need at home - in order to receive income - is an economic issue for governments, not doctors - and a kind of evil.
Judith Martin: Should women or couples be allowed to profit from having so many children? I see something just a wee bit wrong with a "Cheaper by the Dozen" law that would do for big families what the "Son of Sam" law does for murderers.
With so many, the parents cannot possibly devote the attention needed, and often the older siblings end up raising the younger ones, so are the parents shirking responsibility and taking away from the older siblings' childhoods? Thus cutting down on the children's leisure to absorb our instant-sex-and-no-responsibility culture?
Should the medical community intercede when a woman who already has 6 kids comes in for fertility treatment? Wait a minute - aren't we against outside authorities making decisions about what a woman can do with her body?
Jane Wagner: I guess I had the misperception - or should I say misconception - that fertility drugs were used to help women only if they had difficulty conceiving. I'm beginning to think they are being misused by both patient and doctor. It's chilling to say, but, yes, the medical community may have to intercede in the future. Most women, I'm sure, use these drugs for the right reasons, but there are some women who may exploit this form of reproduction science for the wrong reasons. Maybe there's an OCD component to some women having so many babies, or maybe it's a way some women feel they can literally be productive. But we have to come to terms with the fact that overpopulation is a real problem and something we have to address. If I somehow were to see in person those wriggling forms of life, and one were to grab my little finger and squeeze, I am sure I would melt in the face of such a fragile life force - but still ... Science and we are all on a slippery slope. For the good of the future, we need to be concerned about the ways in which we allow ourselves to become truly futuristic before we all are overtaken by Philip Dick-type androids dreaming of electric sheep.
Lesley Stahl: I just can't imagine how this unmarried, single mom of 14 is going to cope. How is she going to feed eight tiny babies? Think assembly line. How is she going to get them up in the morning? Dress them? And I don't mean BUY the clothes; I mean actually put them on. Can you visualize what her grocery cart is going to look like? Mounds of diapers (what's taller than a mound?), formula (don't even think about breast feeding ... please), booties, bibs. Can she do it with just one changing table? What if the kids have colic?
I did a story on "60 Minutes" in 1991 on Camille Geraldi, an extraordinarily heroic woman who adopted 15 children with Down syndrome. She was gifted - not only in her compassion and her capacity to love, but in her organizational abilities. She did indeed get the baby-raising down to a science! I can still see her lineup of high chairs! And the little shoes in military formation in one of the closets. We went with her to the grocery store as she piled up carts (plural), and sat in while the young kids from the neighborhood came over in the morning to help Camille feed and dress the babies.
I'm pretty sure this woman in California has not thought through all the difficulties - big and small, financial and quotidian. As I said, I just can't imagine how this woman is going to handle it.
Meantime, as a reporter, I have a raft of questions:
When a fertility clinic harvests eggs, they always take them in multiples, so if an attempt at a pregnancy fails, there are second and third chances. So, question one is: Does the donor have complete control over the excess eggs? Or does the clinic have any discretion in how they'll be used?
Does the fertility doctor have the right to say "NO, you can't come back again." If so, what happens to the eggs? These are thorny, ethical issues.
I read that this woman's doctor did raise the question of culling. But did he/she fully explain to her the medical dangers (physical and mental) of giving birth to so many babies? At the time, they thought she was having seven.
What about the six children she already has? How are they being raised? What about their health? How are they doing in school? Did the woman's doctors investigate?
As for "profiting" from this, I like what Joan Cooney said: that it's better the money to take care of them comes from the private sector than the taxpayer. But then there are questions about journalistic ethics when media companies pay for stories. Camille Geraldi and her husband (yes, she's married to a doctor - which is key) set up a foundation to raise money to help them raise the kids.
So many questions, so, so many problems for The Mother of 14. She may be in for more challenges than Barack Obama!
More on MSN Health: How Risky is a Multiple Pregnancy?
