Terminalcoffee discussion

My wife, normally a mild-mannered, very laid back person, was so incensed about this lady that she yelled at me during breakfast:

http://www.ktla.com/landing_topstorie...

Now, she wasn't yelling AT me, she was just venting about the situation. Read the article.

Question...should the woman have been allowed to do the embryo thing in her scenario? Is there a slippery slope in which if you don't allow this person you have to not allow that person to have whatever amounts of kids? What do you think? Should the amount of kids one has be regulated? On what should the regulations be based? Would such regulations be sound policy or a transgression on the rights of women?

Another article on the ethics of embryos...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/30/...

I don't think the number of kids a person has should be regulated (other than by common sense, of course) but I think the doctor who helped this woman in the beginning should have questioned the ethics of implanting a woman who already had six kids with eight embryos.

A zillion kids is fuckin' retarded. $1M debt is also fuckin' retarded.
Honestly, I don't see how any person can be a GOOD parent to that many kids. Seems to me that this woman wants to be a mother because of some sort of prideful feeling of ownership and not because she actually wants to BE a mother.

I dunno, dudes. I agree with Dan that regulation by common sense is the best way to go. It's just a shame that some people have very little common sense.

Yeah, hey, maybe we should have the DMV people administer that program. There could be an annual registration fee for kids, and a sticker on their foreheads.

Charly I think you're on to something here.

I agree there should be a test.

I'm not going to go into detail, and it honestly is not my business what other people choose to do with their bodies, but to begin with I question the ethics of fertility treatments and the planting of embryos.

**edited b/c I don't know who reads this.

But the flip side of the original question, should the number of children a person has be regulated, is also conflicted with the application of ethics.

Who else gets to say what I might do with my body? I don't shine to the idea of the government regulating how many kids I have ... it just gives me the willies.

But I'm not everybody. I'm pondering these questions laboriously, while they're just popping out babies without a thought.

I don't think there need to be laws, but there should be some medical guidelines that would prohibit a fertility doctor from implanting more than two embryos at a time. For the health of the mother and the fetuses, if nothing else.
Sheesh.

It was such a risk! Her other children could have been left motherless. I think it was a foolish decision, but many foolish decisions are permitted.

As for the number of children a family has being regulated--no. My dad is the youngest of 11. What if someone would have told them no before the Oregon chapter of Montambos were born?! Terrible!

How could you test it, though? Even the IQ test and the SAT tests are socially biased, and they've been worked on for years. Also, how on Earth do you plan to keep people from getting pregnant?

I know what you mean. I work with kids who, for many reasons, are often slighted grossly in the parent department. Over the years, some of the parents have enraged me to a state when I don't recognize myself. It's so unfair (sometimes words aren't enough to communicate). However, to think that they shouldn't have been born because of that? Unthinkable.

My mom taught parenting classes for years at High School level, and I think maybe this would be a good alternative to an actual test.
They should make that kind of class a required course just like math or science in high school.
It would definitly be a good start.