{"id":132,"date":"2009-08-18T11:40:55","date_gmt":"2009-08-18T11:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/everydayethics\/2009\/08\/woman-pregnant-with-12-babies-outrageous-or-awesome.html"},"modified":"2009-08-18T11:40:55","modified_gmt":"2009-08-18T11:40:55","slug":"woman-pregnant-with-12-babies-outrageous-or-awesome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/08\/woman-pregnant-with-12-babies-outrageous-or-awesome.html","title":{"rendered":"Woman Pregnant With 12 Babies: Outrageous Or Awesome?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Never mind the stretch marks; what on earth is this woman thinking? If the UK’s Sun can be believed, a Tunisian woman is vowing to carry all twelve fetuses to term<\/a> after having several heartbreaking miscarriages in the past.<\/p>\n

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Honestly, in my opinion this would-be “Dodecamom” doesn’t sound insane – per se<\/i>. Rather, she sounds both passionately committed and extremely<\/i> desperate to have children<\/a>. Now, I couldn’t do what she’s doing – not in a million years. But what a heinous ethical dilemma to have to come up against! <\/div>\n
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In vitro fertilization is so tricky: to go from being infertile to hyper-fertile with no middle ground; one’s only medical option to ‘selectively reduce’ the number of fetuses in the womb. In other words, couples risk having either multiple births or having to abort some of the fertilized embryos they’ve created – embryos arguably made more precious by the near impossibility of bringing them into being. To want children so badly, and then to have to agree to abort some of those potential children… how could you choose?<\/div>\n
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I understand that for many, the risks of in vitro fertilization and\/or ovulation induction treatment are worth it; but in this case, the mother is, let’s face it, unlikely to succeed<\/a>. And the cost of failure could mean death for her and any number of her unborn children. Those that survived could have a lifetime of medical problems. It’s an unenviable situation, at best.<\/div>\n
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If the lessons of Nadya Suleman’s rash decisions have not sunk in yet, perhaps it’s time to take a hard look again at how in vitro is practiced, what guidelines govern it, and what safety precautions are in place to help couples whose hearts may be in the right place but whose heads may be clouded by the desperate need to be parents. <\/div>\n

<\/i><\/b><\/div>\n
What do you think? Is this lady a kamikazi mommy or mother of the year?<\/i><\/b><\/div>\n
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Subscribe to receive updates from Everyday Ethics or follow us on Twitter<\/a>!<\/strong> <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Never mind the stretch marks; what on earth is this woman thinking? If the UK’s Sun can be believed, a Tunisian woman is vowing to carry all twelve fetuses to term after having several heartbreaking miscarriages in the past. Honestly, in my opinion this would-be “Dodecamom” doesn’t sound insane – per se. 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She attended St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she studied classics and philosophy, and then respectfully declined to spend the rest of her life in an ivory tower. Instead, she turned to the life of a writer and editor, penning three romance novels published by St. Martin's Press and contributing features to such periodicals as Cosmopolitan magazine. Her fascination with the moral dilemmas that crop up in everyday life--and the many intriguing ways people handle them--has always colored her writings. Now, that interest is leading her to take the discussion online; where, hopefully, the addition of reader feedback will bring these quotidian quandaries--and their potential solutions--vibrantly to life. When she's not plumbing the ethical mysteries of humanity, her passions include cooking (especially baking), origami, kittens, reading, watching really bad television and playing online scrabble. (And no, she doesn't cheat... much.)","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/author\/hfields"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}