Octuple the Controversy

In a culture where, unfortunately, having more than 3 kids will get you some dirty looks, having octuplets certainly brings out the critics.  And that’s exactly what has happened this week.

Nadya Suleman just gave birth to octuplets.  These eight children happen to be in addition to her other six children.  So now she has 14 kids.  Quite the family — for a single mom.

And it’s got our country in an uproar.  But why?

Certainly there is nothing wrong with having a big family.  But how did this single mom end up with 14 of her own kids?  And no father to be found?  In Vitro Fertilization (i.e. Test Tube Babies).

But the uproar is not against the practice of In Vitro Fertilization — it’s about every other thing you can imagine.

Some blame the doctors for allowing this woman to do this.  “Those doctors shouldn’t have ever allowed this single mom to implant those embryos when she already had 6 kids.”  But wouldn’t that violate a woman’s so-called “reproductive rights” we hear about all the time?  Or maybe these people are suggesting that the doctors should have…what?  Forced her to abort some of them? Sounds kinda like China.

Others blame the government for not stepping in or having better regulations on how we manufacture human beings.

Some say that it’s about personal responsibility.  This woman should not have deliberately brought 14 babies to term (and certainly not 8 at one time) with no father around.  They say she should have “selectively reduced” the number of children inside of her — a.k.a. aborted and killed some of them.  And it was irresponsible for her not to do so.

Some say it was irresponsible for her to implant these embryos in the first place.  Perhaps they’re right.  People say there is no way she will be able to properly care for these kids and be a good mother.  I’m not willing to judge her on that one.  But kids don’t only deserve a mother.  They deserve a father, too.

Or perhaps if she were very rich nobody would have cared.  But since she is not, we are all worried about how much these kids will cost us?  Oh, the burden on us they will be!  We won’t be able to buy quite as many fancy cars or iPhones.

Here’s a little side note for ya.  This woman apparently had her first 6 children by In vitro as well.  And she actually still had some number of frozen embryos leftover (i.e. frozen human beings).  The mother didn’t want those leftover embryos destroyed, so she decided to have them implanted.  Now 8 human beings have been given a chance to live their lives.  In that regard, this woman is a hero. You won’t hear that story on the news, though.  Headline: “Woman recognizes right to live of tiny frozen human beings — saves their lives!”

There are countless other frozen embryos out there that all have a right to live their lives, too.  But are they a part of this ethical conversation? Of course not.

The problem with all of the arguments I’m actually hearing in this “controversy” is that they are all just more oil on the slippery slope we’re already on.  It seems we’re willing to criticize just about anything and anybody in this situation except In Vitro Fertilization itself.

The fact that we’re sitting around talking about human life in terms of whose fault it is should set off some alarms.

In 1968, Pope Paul VI released an encyclical called Humanae Vitae – “Of Human Life”.  In it he made a few predictions of things that would happen if our culture continued on a path unfaithful to God’s design of sexuality, marriage, and procreation.  He was addressing the use of contraception, but also other artificial means of birth control and procreation.  It turns out…he was right on every single one of his predictions.

He predicted that the use of contraception, sterilization and artificial means of birth control (such as in vitro) would lead man to think he has “unlimited domain” over his own body.  That we would start to treat our bodies as machines, altering them to fit our own selfish desires and timetables.

The real tragedy is that our culture and technology have enabled us to abuse our bodies in regard to something as fundamental as procreation.  It allowed this woman to use her body as a machine to get what she wanted.  She took some of her eggs and had them put into a test tube where a scientist then conceived many little human bodies and human souls and froze them to be used at her disposal.

These children are nobody’s fault.  However, the difficult situations and “ethical controversies” we find ourselves discussing now are every bit our own fault.  Pope Paul VI warned us.