Nadya Suleman Seeks Donations Online For Her Octuplets

3 Comments so far

1. servicemember | 13 February 2009, 09:31

   Is there a good side to this i am missing that this woman deserves support or should get it. Is this the example we want our daughters to follow and have people support, cause i mean honestly how many of you can support 14 children right now single with no spouse or support from the other person since technically sperm was donated. The clinic was at fault as well but this woman needs serious help and its not by donations its mental help.

2. TDregansky | 13 February 2009, 12:06

   A number of writers more wise than I have reflected on the issues of population and birth.

   Confucius (551-478 BC) cautioned “excessive growth may reduce output per worker, repress levels of living for the masses and engender strife.”

   Plato (427-347 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC) discussed the best population size for Greek city states. Aristotle concluded that a rapid increase in population would bring “certain poverty on the citizenry, and poverty is the cause of sedition and evil.”

   Kautilya(350-283 BC) considered population as a source of political, economic, and military strength. “Though a given territory can hold too many or too few people, the latter is the greater evil.”

   Augustus (63 BC-14CE), needed manpower to acquire and administrate the Roman Empire. Laws rewarded early marriage and frequent childbirth, providing tax breaks and preferential treatment when applying for public office. Severe limitations were imposed on those that did not have children in numbers. Resistance to these laws led to their being abolished as “obsolete and unenforceable.”

   Tertullian (160-220CE) was one of the first to describe famine and war as preventing overpopulation, saying, “The strongest witness is the vast population of the earth to which we are a burden and she scarcely can provide for our needs; as our demands grow greater, our compliants against Nature’s inadequacy are heard by all. The scourges of pestilence, famine, wars and earthquakes have come to be regarded as a blessing to overcrowded nations, since they serve to prune away the luxuriant growth of the human race.”

   Ibn Khaldoun (1332-1406CE) considered population increase and decrease as connected to economic development, linking high birth rates and low death rates to times of economic upswing, and low birth rates and high death rates to economic downswing. Khaldoun concluded that high population density rather than high absolute population numbers were desirable.

   The Biblical command of the Christian faith says, “Be ye fruitful and multiply”. However, as Bill Cosby has expressed in his many performances speaking of Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from Paradise, he is quoted best, “God was angry, when God told them to do that!”

   Do I personally think what the Octo-Mom did was a good thing, or a right thing? No. She already had kids she couldn’t provide for on her own. These are facts, and I can’t deny them. I think it was profoundly irresponsible. I also think the doctor that deliberately did this for her is criminally negligent, and should be investigated for any technical or ethical violations he may have committed while helping this woman create a family of fourteen that she could not care for. A physician has a moral and ethical obligation not to perform procedures that will ultimately prove harmful for his public trust. It’s an oath I myself took, so I take this part very seriously. It shouldn’t be an issue now, because the doctor should not have agreed to do this in the first place.

   But, these children are here now, and if we are an ethical and morally base society, we have an obligation to render fellowship, care and compassion to these children. It is not their fault that they exist, and they should not be villified or exploited as payment for their right to exist.

   “If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more…
   – Michel de Montaigne”

3. Denise | 16 February 2009, 14:58

   Somebody left this comment on another blog. I wish I could take credit for it. “It’s a vagina, not a clown car.”