The right to have octuplets

Reports of death threats, plastic surgeries, and state-sponsored manicures surround Nadya Suleman and her new octuplets, making headlines that sound more like the Enquirer than national news. And as if the pictures of her belly, which look like she ingested five large watermelons, doesn't add to the weirdness factor, those from her interview with NBC's Ann Curry, in which she looks like a dead ringer for another "instant family, just add water" mama, Angelina Jolie, do.

The 33-year-old mother, who already had six children (all conceived using various fertility treatments), says she was an only child and wanted a large family because she was often lonely growing up. Suleman says that the octuplets born on January 26 were embryos left over from her previous in-vitro procedures with the same sperm donor as her first six children: "I wanted them all transferred. Those are my children, and that's what was available."

Since the babies' birth, vicious cyber-flack centers not on the morality of in-vitro fertilization, the genesis of life, or the ethics of creating large numbers of "homeless" cryogenically preserved embryos, but on Suleman herself, because she is single, unemployed, on the California dole, living with her parents in a small three bedroom home, and now asking for donations on her website. My guess is that even those who believe life begins at conception, while tipping their hats to Suleman for her noble decision to take responsibility for her remaining embryos, are wishing she had used the same kind of noble decision-making before getting the embryos made in the first place.

Opponents of large families and pro-abortion altruists ("Imagine, 17 people in one house---where will they put all the beds?") alike have been quick to jump on the Suleman-as-psycho bandwagon, pointing fingers and blaming everyone from her mother (who should have seen it coming/refused to help her/kicked her out of the house) to the fertility doctors (who should care more for the mother's and babies' health than publicity or pocketbook) to the government (who should be more closely regulating the industry). What abortion advocates miss is that, by campaigning for an abortion-bound woman to have the right over her own body, they are unwittingly pushing for the same rights for a live birth--bound mother, regardless of the number of babies birthed at one sitting, the mom's socio-economic status, or her eerie resemblance to Angelina Jolie.