Sunday, February 15, 2009

Meet Jane Roe

I may be a month late to this party, but at first I dismissed it as an insignificant piece of bizarro non-news, the opposite of a human interest story. More of a human freakshow.

A single mother of six, undergoes in vitro and has octuplets. The public reaction ran the gamut, the full spectrum of human emotions.

At least the range between outrage and disgust.

In the wake of this story there have been editorials, investigations, calls to regulate the fertility industry, and now death threats. The criticism seems to be universal - left and right; religious and secular; feminist and chauvinist.

Then a thought occurred to me - why is any of this our business? If, as the left claims, that the abortion debate is really about "choice," then shouldn't we celebrate this woman's choices? Isn't this the ultimate expression of Roe? If there were calls to regulate abortions clinics en masse following a single doc's display of poor ethical judgment, wouldn't NARAL be up in arms? "Get your laws off my body!" and all that?

This woman exercised her choice, and is being villified for it. The hypocrisy is stunning.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree with your opinion on this case. You are the first person I have read who expressed that choice is personal, and the public at large should stop being so judgmental. I don't think she expected eight.

Anonymous said...

Choice is personal, and this would not be anyone else's business IF: She were not a candidate for welfare, which is designed to help those in unfortunate situations. It was not intended to raise families but help them get by. it is sad that we have allowed generation after generation to live solely on welfare, but then we've also failed to help these people obtain jobs that pay more than $5 an hour. In this case, the woman who does not have a job or a source of income is bringing in eight more mouths for the U.S. people to feed.

Second, doctors are planting more embryos than necessary for women to become impregnated. She had eight fertilized eggs implanted, and guess what? All eight survived. So, it is our business when she and the doctor knew they were going against recommended practices for now apparent reason other than to bring more children in this world.

Anonymous said...

I can certainly disagree with the doctors and patients overzealous choice to implant eght fertilized eggs, but me not being a fertility specialists, I don't know the rates of successful survival of implants. I'm sure that ethically the doctor's don't just AGREE to whatever crazy notions the patient might come up with. So, I am saying, I don't think the intention was purposeful to create 8 babies, so others could support them, as you put it. That's an extreme notion. It is more likely that this was a fluke. And have you ever tried to be a parent of two and be employed. Much less 8. Hopefully the kinks of over-fertilizing are being worked out.