The XX Factor: What women really think.

Eight Is Too Many

At first, the media and medical establishment  tsk-tsking over irresponsible fertility treatments seemed a bit, er, premature in the coverage of the California woman who delivered eight babies totaling over 16 pounds at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower, this week. None of the relatives had spoken to the press (despite the many TV bookers undoubtedly camped out in their Whittier cul-de-sac since the birth of the six boys and two girls was announced Monday) and the delivery team, who have not been as camera shy, would not comment on whether the mother had had prenatal medical intervention. Yesterday, an "acquaintance" told reporters the still unidentified new mother, who lives with her mother and father while her husband is stationed in Iraq, has six more children, including a set of twins, at home. The new arrivals, who were delivered from her distended uterus in about five minutes, brought the number of family members who will occupy a three-bedroom home to at least 17. It seemed unlikely to me that the overburdened woman would turn to assisted reproductive technologies to enlarge her family, especially given how expensive and only fractionally insurance-covered fertility treatments are.  I thought perhaps the 32-year-old woman was just preternaturally fertile. Her generation has been environmentally exposed to so much chemical estrogen and other fertility-inducing substances, I reasoned, and litter-sized multiple births could be a harbinger of things to come. But we learned today from the Los Angeles Times, who coaxed the grandmother, Angela Suleman, to the phone that fertilized embryos had indeed been implanted in her daughter 30 weeks ago and to her surprise all of them "took."  I am normally not one to question another woman's reproductive choices, but I can't help wondering, what was she thinking?