Baby Steps

I've been thinking a lot about the Octo-mom lately -- Nadya Suleman, who made horror-freak-show news when she gave birth to octuplets. Then the really bad news started to come out: she had no job, 6 other kids -- and may lose her house. And the kicker -- all 14 births were made possible by a Beverly Hills infertility clinic. This coupled with a story in the New York Times about links between IVF and certain birth defects made me think again about the fertility industry. 

There is basically no regulation of the fertility industry, whose services aren't covered by health insurance, either. The treatments are expensive, causing women to ask their docs to implant them with multiple eggs for the chance that one, or OK, two or three, of the fertilized eggs could turn into that dream baby their body does not want to have on its own. 

Our culture is oddball. It pressures women to have babies, then recoils when they have too many, or not enough cash (Angelina Jolie with a truckload of kids is cute. Welfare moms with same: decidedly not). Or they do it in a way that is medically possible but ethically questionable. 

So then the question is, who is going to start making some of these hard choices? Given the change in administration to a pro-science agenda, my vote is regulation. And fast. With older parents the norm, IVF a standard procedure and multiple births adding to the burden of our hospitals and health systems, and certainly our schools, we need to start paying more attention. And not just the horrified kind.