Attack of (and on) the Octo-Mom

I think when we all first heard the story of the mother giving birth to 8 healthy babies at Kaiser-Permanente, we all rejoiced they were healthy babies (as healthy as they could be considering their birth weights). However, I began to wonder (1) how she would take care of the babies, (2) if fertility drugs were involved, and (3) as to the identity of the woman. The mother of 8 refused to be identified and everyone was left wondering why.
Then we found out. The mother wanted to remain unidentified because she already had 6 other children. When this news broke, many people found themselves bewildered as to how a woman with 6 children would end up with 8 more. Was this just a tragedy that she got pregnant again and instead of just one more child, fertility drugs resulted in an unplanned additional 7? Surely, no woman who has 6 children would want 8 more, right?
We began to learn more about Nadya Suleman, the OctoMom, and became even more disgusted with her and her actions. News leaks provided us with incremental information until we had the full picture. First we learned that she had 6 other children, then we learned she was unemployed. We also learned that she was unwed at the time of the octuplet birth, declared bankruptcy, and was living with her parents.
But that’s not all. On top of all this, she had the 8 children implanted through in-vitro fertilization; a not-so-cheap medical procedure. My first question is, if she was unemployed, how did she pay for this procedure? Surely Medicaid or Medicare was not used to financed the procedure. That would defeat the purpose right? Use government money to have more children so you can then receive more government money? Surely the people at Kaiser-Permanente know the difference between an elective procedure and necessary one, right? I don’t think an additional 8 children even qualifies in the ball park of necessary.
Even more despicable is that the OctoMom wanted to sell her story to a major news outlet for two million dollars! Two million dollars is probably more than I’ll see in a lifetime and this woman gets that much money for giving birth to more children than are featured in the Brady Bunch! If that’s the case, then shouldn’t we make the standards consistent and give $2 Million to every mother than births 14 children?
In addition to the two million dollars she has received from her interview, there is a website that allows people to make donations to the OctoMom to help her raise the children. How much more welfare does this woman need? She already landed the two million dollars for the exclusive interview and now people are giving her private donations?
I did the math. If she has two million dollars for her interview, and 15 members in her household (14 children plus her), assuming she only supports the children until they’re 18, then she has $111,111 to spend per year. That’s a lot more than I make and a lot more than a lot of people make. The federal poverty level for a family of 15 is $60,800 per year. Annually, the OctoMom has $50,000 more than the federal poverty level. To keep things in perspective, the annual amount of money she has over the federal poverty level is still more than most people make in a year. And the worst part is that we have people that still want to donate more money to this woman.
Some of you may remember a few years ago that a family gave birth to 5 or 6 children as a result of using fertility drugs. People felt sorry for them and donated a lot of money and necessities to help ease the burden of raising the children. The difference between that case and this case is that the OctoMom knew what she was getting into, whereas the additional children born to the other couple was completely unexpected. The OctoMom wantonly requested that all 8 remaining fertilized eggs be implanted because she always felt lonely and wanted to have children "more than anything in the world’. Her poor decision-making abilities are no different than a mother on welfare who has another child to obtain more money from the government. Her actions are distasteful, shameless, and in my opinion, have warranted the outrage and negative media coverage she has received.
Quite frankly, I can see why she wanted to remain anonymous.