Opinion: In Friday’s Letters to the editor
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In Friday’s Letters to the editor, readers ponder the ethical problems of giving birth to octuplets -- problems that seem even more stark today, as we learn that the mother of the Bellflower babies already had six children.
Writes Roberta Quiroz, of Los Angeles, responding to this story about fertility experts’ reaction to the birth:
I am relieved to see that even the fertility community is uneasy with such irresponsible medical decisions as to allow a woman to carry eight fetuses. The mother will discover when she tries to breast-feed all of them that humans are not meant to have litters. There is a reason why women have only two breasts. No woman should be allowed to receive fertility treatments unless she is willing to sign either a commitment to selective reduction, or an agreement to pay all the healthcare costs herself. I can guarantee you that if that family had to pay the costs themselves, they would never have dreamed of attempting to carry so many fetuses.
But Kristy McTaggart, of Costa Mesa, sees moral peril, too, in this Op-Ed by William Woodwell, which suggests that ‘multifetal reduction’ should perhaps be mandatory when fertility treatments produce high-multiple pregnancies that are likely to result in premature births:
Was anyone else creeped out by William H. Woodwell Jr.’s chilling conclusion that parents whose fertility treatments yielded three or more developing fetuses should be ‘[encouraged] or even somehow [required] ... to engage in multifetal reduction’? So you are in your obstetrician’s exam room and he says, ‘Congratulations! The fertility treatments worked a little overtime and you are pregnant with quadruplets! But you know that is over the legal limit so we are going to have to give you an injection that will kill two of them.’ What Woodwell is suggesting is consistent with the philosophy of Nazi Germany: People who are ‘burdens’ to society should be legally terminated. His own child has cerebral palsy. Is she a burden or a miracle? Taken to an extreme, Woodwell’s approach would give the government, even above his objections as her father, the power to decide.
Responses to coverage of greenhouse gas emissions limits for California, cush commission appointments in Sacramento, and the state budget, too.
*Photo of Kaiser Permanente doctors reporting on health of the octoplets by AP Photo/Branimir Kvartuc.