The unnamed California woman who gave birth to a set of healthy octuplets earlier this week at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Bellflower – only the second time octuplets have been delivered successfully in the US – has received worldwide attention. And not all of it is gushing. On Thursday, the anonymous woman was quoted as saying she was “ecstatic about all of their arrivals” and called their birth “miraculous”, but half the world and its mothers didn't seem to share her joy. Perfect strangers from all over the world turned up in droves on internet forums and newspaper websites that published the story to rain derision and dispense self-righteous advice on “responsible parenting” to the hapless woman. While the more prosaic wondered “how on earth is she going to manage them” and “who will pay for these little mites?”, others were more vociferous and dare I say downright vicious with their jibes. From “these parents should be ashamed” to “ it's unnatural for a woman to have a “litter” of babies” to calling the births “a horror, a drain on the world's resources in these taxing financial times”...the outpour of vituperation seemed calculated to hit the mother where it hurt the most. It's true that some medical ethicists and fertility specialists argue that high-number multiple births endanger the mother and can lead to long-term health and developmental problems for the children. But in this particular case, the woman was in safe hands at one of the foremost fertility clinics in the US and was constantly monitored from the first trimester on by a team of experts. So the safety of mother and children was not a prime concern on the minds of people who objected to the “obscenity” of choosing to give birth to all her children, when she could have selectively aborted them. The point made by doctors on an individual's freedom of choice to give birth, or not, was completely lost in spite of two prominent doctors being quoted in media reports on the redundancy of ‘playing god' in such situations. “Who am I to say that six is the limit?” said Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, medical director of Fertility Institutes, which has clinics in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and New York City. “There are people who like to have big families.” Dr. James Grifo, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the NYU School of Medicine, added: “I don't think it's our job to tell them how many babies they're allowed to have. I am not a policeman for reproduction in the United States.” The story struck a nerve with me, since I have witnessed and borne first hand the unspoken, barely disguised apartheid that people with large families face nowadays. From the neighbor who complains about the “clutter” of kids' bicycles to the woman who snaps at mothers who dare to bring children to the mosque, the vibe large families get from the world is overwhelmingly negative. Interestingly, this was not always the case. Our predecessors raised large families – and raised them well – without attracting social censure or comment. One can only put it down to the mass brainwashing by well-oiled, secular propaganda machines that procreation – a process which has its origin and outcome completely in the hands of the Divine – is getting such bad press today. The fact that these tirades originate from people who are supposedly ‘liberal' and ‘pro-choice' in their outlook gives me a good laugh. In their attempt to play ‘god' and decide what's best for the rest of humanity, they are no less bigoted than any Nazi. The next time people feel the urge to shoot off their mouths at mothers who have been blessed with more babies than what they deem “socially appropriate” and “politically correct”, I would advise them to reflect on Noam Chomsky's words: “If we don't believe in freedom of expression (or choice) for people (or choices) we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”
