Mother Of Octuplets Has Six Other Kids

Posted by | January 30, 2009 10:45 | Filed under: Top Stories


The mother was taking fertility drugs and had embryos implanted. And yet, she says she’s surprised she gave birth to so many babies.  Doctors advised her about the risks involved, but she chose to continue her pregnancy.  


Some fertility specialists have said the children face increased health risks because they are octuplets and born nine weeks premature. At birth, they ranged between 1 pound, 8 ounces and 3 pounds, 4 ounces.

 

Doctors say they advise against higher-order births, but acknowledge the decision is not theirs to make.

 

Doctors say they’re not in charge of telling families how many children to have, but one can raise the issue of whether this is responsible.  Are there too many health risks?  Can each child get proper care? And, in this case, it turns out the family filed for bankruptcy last year, and the grandfather is heading back to his native Iraq to find work.  The mother lives with her parents and there is no word of the father.  


On CBS’s Early Show, the director of an Atlanta-area fertility clinic says he’s “stunned” that another clinic would have allowed these embryonic implants to take place.  


…Michael Tucker, scientific director of Georgia Reproductive Specialists, says all these developments leave him “stunned. As the story’s unfolded and it’s gone from the potential use of just fertility drugs, or misuse thereof, to actual, apparently, IVF (in-vitro fertilization) with transfer of embryos, this is just remarkable to me that any practitioner in our field of reproductive medicine would undertake such a practice.”

 

Tucker, who has a doctorate in reproductive physiology, says it’s “absolutely” possible the octuplets’ mother got pregnant with them by taking fertility drugs on her own without the help of a clinic, “and that seemed the most plausible scenario, simply because the profession, we’re policed by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, has focused so minutely on the fact that we need to reduce the number of embryos that we transfer. We really are all about seeking the one, the one embryo that’s going to make the healthy, single-born baby.


There will be 17 people living in a two or three bedroom home, a family that requires the grandfather to leave the country to find work to support them, and a single mother who took fertility drugs and had embryos implanted when she already had six children between ages 2 and 7.  Good choices?


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Copyright 2009 Liberaland
By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.

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