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Thursday, February 12, 2009

More on the Nadya Suleman Story

The more I read, the angrier I get, and I have not been able to get ahold of Anne Curry to let her know how discriminatory I felt her interview was in comparison to the other families who have had multiples, so I'll just put it here and hope some of those people who can't seem to say anything nice will at the very least know that the whole world does NOT in fact agree with their tirades.

First, for clarity, I do not agree with many of the decisions Ms. Suleman made. I am completely against IVF, as I wrote before, because it gives the doctor too much god-power. He could be throwing those embryos in the trash while pretending to implant them in order to force you into more cycles and more money. He could sell some of your embryos to someone under the table. He could use his own sperm without your knowledge. And don't give me the 'doctors live by ethical guidelines' speech, because you're the very same people who are condemning a doctor for implanting this woman to begin with. I believe in the sanctity of marriage and the sanctity of family- that both should involve a man and a woman, committed for life. And yet I find myself defending this woman against the culture of which she is a product. The culture that said you can have whatever you want and you don't have to do it the way it has always been done.

So, say someone wants a big family. Life-long dream. No progress the traditional way (married and trying to conceive), so we move to the advances in science to see if they can provide a solution. We do W+X and get Y, which is a baby. Repeat 4 more times, and get Y (except once when it results in YY). So we have a precedent here of W+X equalling Y. Even the margin of error resulted in only YY. So for a sixth time we do W+X, and get YYYYYYYY. Even people who work in statistics and probability will tell you there was no way to know that was coming. We have created a way to fiddle with the human body in order to get what we couldn't before- surely you had to figure somewhere it was going to backfire. You can't even buying an appliance without a warning that if you use it in a manner other than what the manufacturer intended it for, he will not be liable for what happens to you.

Then I keep reading comments about how a single, unemployed mother should never have that many kids- one is enough. Whoa! (so much for a woman's right to control reproduction, BTW!) If the problem is that she can't possibly care for all those children and give them what they 'need' (read: everything advertised on TV)because she is not working, then why subject even one child to a life of doing without? Feminism's jagged pill is that you have the right to demand whatever the world says is normal, but anything beyond that and you're on your own. If it is an ethical dilemma, what impact does the number of kids have? She would be just as 'unfit' to one child as to 14, no? So you're willing to pay taxes to support a woman with one kid, but that's the cut-off? You people are deranged.

On to the financial arguments. Ms. Suleman is currently living off of student loans. I'm still waiting for the point here. You mean that is different than the thousands of couples who take out loans to pay for IVF, or for overseas adoptions in countries who have made babies a commodity? That's different than someone who has a life long dream of living in a prestigious house getting a loan to pay for it? We are currently bailing out those people and their pie-in-the-sky mortgages, but the only person we can blame for such a 'scheme' is the lady who's dream was kids instead of a house? This is America- when we can't afford what we want, we charge it. We get what we want now and agree to pay for it later. And while we're talking about the financial aspect, isn't investing in kids a better risk than commodities? Kids appreciate. They will grow in value as they become old enough to work. Houses and cars depreciate. At least her investment makes logical sense! And she is using those loans to get the degree that the world has said she cannot succeed without.

Well, her house is too small. Does anybody remember the house the septuplets went home to? Or better yet, the homes our great-grandmothers not only raised large families in, but gave birth to those families in? If someone had 12 kids in an 800 square foot cabin today, they'd be taken away! Jimminy Cricket, we're sure lucky our government finally went against its own constitution to determine for us what is best, because we sure don't know ourselves. Of course, there would have been nowhere to put the kids taken into custody 200 years ago, because all the neighbors lived the same way. No wonder they were so miserably unhappy and our nation suffered a lack of inventors and heroes.

And finally, our country has 'progressed' to a point that people can condemn one another without ever meeting. Countless quacks psychologists have been paid to consult media moguls on the mental health of Ms. Suleman. Without any kind of clinical sessions or testing, they have given diagnoses ranging from an unhealthy preoccupation, to schizophrenia, all based on an hour long, edited interview with a journalist who focused on her own presuppositions to determine the questions. An interview with a woman who had just been through the most exhausting and terrifying experience of her life, both emotionally and physically. Bringing the argument full-circle to the first argument I made, in America, sanity is now subjective. G-d preserve us.

6 comments:

Tracy said...

I HATE how the media is creating something so HUGE out of this.. she is getting death threats, even her children are getting death threats.. people need to get a life and leave these people alone. I refuse to even watch anything about it anymore, I won't give my time to this media circus.

Humble wife said...

Holy toledo- my penofjen.blogspot that was inspired by your previous post is eerily similar.

Keep on writing.
Jennifer

Audrey said...

I just love you Amy! You have a way of putting into words what I am thinking but cant spit out.

The truth of the matter is "people" "society" "the powers that be" HATE children. They especially hate them in large families because there is power in numbers!

Ace said...

Hi Amy,

I don't agree with all the nay-sayers out there. I do agree that EVERY child is a gift and that we have as a society fed women the "hey, you can do it all, no matter the cost" dream. It is that dream that lead this woman to think this was a good idea, to put her WANTS above what a child NEEDS (and I do not mean material, I mean a Mother dedicated to THEIR wellbeing...not HERS).

I am pointing out that we are now in a space in time where the government has steped in to lead the family and the taxpayers are the husband's...so to speak. So now, when the tax payers are paying the tab...they don't WANT to pay the tab for someone who seems to get pregnant as a hobby. NOW they demand standars such as a gainfully employed husband and a sacrifical Mother.

We WOMEN MADE IT THIS WAY! That is what I mean. When we stopped doing things the way God laid out, we are left at the mercy of man..and the cost of things is where the buck stops.

Just like now seniors will need to "accept" terminal diagnosises and less pain medications...women who are raising families on welfare may just be doing so with regulations on how many children the STATE is willing to support...and under what circumstances..and for how long...
and that is a terrifying future but one we have wrought.

Many Blessings :)
Ace

Lisa said...

Thank you for voicing (almost verbatim) what I have been saying as well. At least that makes 2 of us! Well, 3 since my husband agrees!

Anonymous said...

I agree with ACE children are a gift but what if we take that gift and be selfish with it , I actually had a friend that enjoyed being pregnant than she did raising her kids and what was sad was the man she had her children with was a man who was married to someone else and had other children by that union...This is what happens when we mess with GODs plans and twist them to make them our own...