The XX Factor: What women really think.

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  Baby, Baby

  Posted Friday, January 30, 2009 1:55 PM | By E.J. Graff

  Well, Jessica, maybe people are riveted to these shows the way they are riveted to every reality show: At least I'm not as crazy as they are! Or, in the case of the mean nanny shows, at least my house isn't as bad as that!

  And Bonnie, forget what the woman herself was thinking: What was the doctor thinking? It should be medical malpractice to  implant eight embryos, given the extreme probability of premature births leading to crippling disabilities—especially if the woman says in advance that she would not be inclined to reduce the number if they all implanted.

  Filed under: Reality TV, Octuplets, fertility treatments

About E.J. Graff

• E.J. Graff is associate director and senior researcher at Brandeis University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, where she directs the Gender & Justice Project. She is a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center. As a journalist and author, her work has appeared in such venues as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy magazine, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, Columbia Journalism Review, Good Housekeeping, The Nation, The New Republic, and in more than a dozen anthologies. She collaborated on former Massachusetts Lt. Governor Evelyn Murphy's book Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men--and What To Do About It (Simon & Schuster, 2005). Her first book, What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution, has been widely cited in legal journals, reprinted for academic use, entered as courtroom exhibits, and quoted by government policymaking bodies.

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