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Who Will Foot The Bill For Super Mom Suleman's Brood?

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JOHN HERBERT

From Where I Sit

Published: March 7, 2009

I've rarely witnessed a scenario like it, although some school-age mass murders have certainly been worse. Just a few weeks ago, apparently "out-of- it" California girl Nadya Suleman gave birth to octuplets and was proclaimed America's new Super Mom for a couple of days.

The bottom fell quickly out of the story: Suleman was disclosed already to be a single mother of six youngsters, all under the age of 8, a unemployed mother and even on student loans, food stamps and other welfare.

Suleman and her young family live with her own senior mother in a house that's soon tagged for foreclosure. So much for the Miracle Mom saga. No free diapers, baby food or housing on the horizon. And no sign of President Obama's call for a new age of responsibility.

Within a short time, amazement over Suleman's "production" turned to condemnation and even disgust. One measure of contempt: of some 50 listings on Internet, not a single one said "Congratulations, Nadya." Instead, some called for Suleman's sterilization, while others bannered "What Nadya Suleman did was totally wrong."

Some took to parody to portray Suleman. One rap singer jested she "pops 'em out like a toaster; needs a pacifier holster." In another scene, a doctor in scrubs used a baseball glove to catch flying newborns.

Or how about a suggestion to do her own reality show, perhaps something like a "Fear Factor" TV show. Many listings were of the "unmentionable" variety. Enter a really creepy fact. Speculation is that Suleman may have had plastic surgery to resemble a more popular Angelina Jolie, who's supposedly adopted a couple of African infants. Well, the likeness is striking.

As the days clicked by, new questions came up: who would be footing the multimillion-dollar medical bills for both mother and unique brood of living octuplets? Why, Medicaid and average American taxpayers, of course. Try the cost of 47 birthing attendants, for starters. We're talking millions of dollars.

And who's going to take care of the "extended" family? Newborns usually require the love and attention of their natural mother. But will they in this case? Especially with "Grandma Octomom" due to lose her own home, already bunked up for communal living? Grandmother, mother and 14 kids squeezed into a single, tiny lodging doesn't sound like the setting for a happy homecoming or for living happily forever after.

Why did Suleman, an "in vitro" veteran with her first brood, even do it again? Claiming to be "fixated" on having children to compensate for a "lonely" childhood, Octomom insists she can care for so big a brood of youngsters by returning to college next autumn. "I'll be able to afford them when I'm done with my schooling," she's been quoted as saying.

I doubt that very much. One child may be doable with help; three become a fulltime job. Fourteen? Suleman needs a reality check or two. How can any one person take care of 14 babies when she's so obviously untrained for the job? And when I don't see any juicy "How I Did It" book deals in the making.

Whatever; the entire "octomom" case will surely reignite rounds of legal and ethical issues. So far, multiple births inducted by "in vitro" are governed by state guidelines that can't really be enforced by anyone. Government selectivity would be tantamount to abortion to sounding too much like Red China.

The closest the Feds get to multiple-birth regulations — and that's far enough — are for fertility clinics to give details, voluntarily, to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And into some voluminous files in the sky.

Current multi-birth practices, largely adopted but without legal recourse, around the nation, cover little more than the number of "in vitros" done of women in varying age groups: Two at a time for a hopeful mother under the age of 35, and a maximum of five to a 40-year-old. Suleman, at present, would fall through the cracks.

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine claims it will use the Suleman case as a springboard to open new inquiries. The California Medical Board is also threatening to get into the multi-birth act with at least stricter guidance and, perhaps, new license rules.

What's their interest, when Suleman can't be stopped with a simple psychological exam? Multiple births cause all kinds of risks to mother and children, from premature death, diabetes, hypertension to cerebral palsy. Plus weeks of extended bed rest. Not rosy pictures of what was once joyous motherhood.

My young daughter, a birthing unit nurse in the snowbound foothills of New England, cautions: "Go carefully with this one, Dad. Lots of people up here support Suleman."

Oh, where's the beef this time?

A regular columnist for Hernando Today, John Herbert lives in Spring Hill.

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