By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
The birth of octuplets to a 33 year old single woman in Los Angeles on Jan. 26 is raising serious questions about the way in vitro fertilization (IVF) is being used. The mother, Nadya Suleman, already has six other children, all conceived through IVF.
Suleman’s mother, Angela, told the Associated Press that her daughter now has 14 children without a father and said she was not supportive when her daughter decided to have more embryos implanted last year.
“It can’t go on any longer,” she said in a phone interview Friday. “She’s got six children and no husband. I was brought up the traditional way. I firmly believe in marriage. But she didn’t want to get married.”
Apparently, Nadya has been obsessed with having children since her teenage years. Several years ago, she worked as a psychiatric technician but quit after being injured on the job. That’s when when she started having children and enrolled in school. She graduated from Cal State Fullerton in 2006 with a bachelor of science degree in child and adolescent development and returned to pursue a master’s degree in counseling. She last attended school in the spring of 2008.
Nadya, whose six other children range in age from two to seven years, is currently living with her parents in their 1,550-square-foot home in Whittier. Her father, an Iraqi native, has been working in Iraq as a translator to help support the family. Financial woes caused the family to declare bankruptcy a year ago.
Nadya’s case has drawn much needed attention to the many problems associated with IVF, a process that has gained widespread acceptance because it’s usually billed as a way for childless couples to conceive.
Unfortunately, the rest of the story about IVF is rarely told, such as how 80 percent of the embryos created in clinics are destroyed during the process. Those who survive are subjected to cryopreservation (freezing) which exposes them to grave physical danger. For this and other reasons, the Catholic Church has condemned the use of IVF.
What the Suleman case is highlighting is another destructive process of IVF, that of implanting large numbers of embryos in a woman’s womb. If too many of these embryos begin to grow, women are routinely encourage to abort “excess” babies in a practice benignly named “embryo reduction.” Suleman was apparently offered this option but declined.
Since the birth of the babies, many fertility experts are openly criticizing Suleman’s doctors for impregnating a single mother of six with so many embryos.
“I cannot see circumstances where any reasonable physician would transfer [so many] embryos into a woman under the age of 35 under any circumstance,” said Arthur Wisot, a fertility doctor in Redondo Beach to The Los Angeles Times.
Even though doctors can’t deny treatment to a woman simply because she has other children, they should have taken steps to make sure she did not have so many babies at once.
“I certainly think you can talk to her about it if you feel like she’s making a decision that’s not in her best interest or the interest of her children,” Wisot said. “You can send her for psychological evaluation, but I honestly don’t know if you can say, ‘No, I won’t take care of you because you have too many children.’ ”
The California Medical Board, which investigates doctors, and the California Department of Public Health, said no doctors or facilities are currently being investigated regarding the births. It is also unlikely that the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services would get involved unless it receives a complaint of child abuse or neglect.
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