Health Features
Mother of 14 courts controversy, cash (News Feature)
By Andy Goldberg Feb 4, 2009, 0:36 GMT
Los Angeles - What kind of woman with six children under the age of eight has eight frozen embryos implanted and gives birth to octuplets?
To her detractors, Nadya Suleman is dangerously child-obsessed lunatic more in need of psychiatric help than fertility treatment. For these people, Suleman and the doctors who performed her in-vitro fertilization were guilty of a profound breach of ethics.
Making it worse, Suleman has the temerity to cash in on the babies whose birth last week was greeted almost as a miracle in a country reeling from a barrage of bad economic news and mass layoffs. Reality TV shows, books, lucrative interviews and even a proposed 2-million- dollar chat show in which she would leverage her feats of motherhood to dispense advice to moms across America - all have reportedly been offered to America's newest celebrity mother.
But on Tuesday, as the din of disapproval reached a crescendo, Suleman, 33, started to give her side of the story. Her newly hired publicist made an appearance on a popular morning talk show to extol Suleman's natural virtues.
'My client is a wonderful woman, she's smart, she's bright, she's well-educated, and she has a wonderful sense of humour,' crowed PR consultant Joann Killeen. 'She's looking forward to being the best mum she can possibly be to all her children. She looks at this as a blessed event.'
Killeen acknowledged that Suleman was fielding a barrage of offers.
'There are multiple envelopes and multiple proposals, and we will sit down with our client and decide what is the best way for her to tell her story,' Killeen said. 'Everyone has a different idea of what she is going to do.'
Far from being a money-grubbing publicity hound, Suleman is a well-balanced individual who just loves kids, Killeen insisted.
'She's going to look at all the opportunities and choices that she has to provide the best financial future for her children. She's very excited about telling her story and setting the record straight about Nadya, her family and her life,' Killeen said.
That could be a hard job given what has already been leaked out to the press. Suleman's mother told reporters a day after the birth that Nadya was 'obsessed with children' and that she had ignored her mother's plea to seek psychological help.
It remains unclear who the father is.
On the birth certificates of both sets of children, the father is listed as David Solomon, rather than Suleman's divorced husband Marcos Gutierrez. Suleman herself has little employment history, though she was working toward a masters degree in child development until spring 2008.
There is greater mystery about how she became impregnated. Doctors at Kaiser Permanente, where she gave birth, said they first saw Suleman when she was already 23 weeks pregnant.
Many fertility specialists maintained this weekend that impregnating a young woman with so many embryos was ethically wrong, because such a large multiple-foetus pregnancy poses huge dangers both to the mother and children.
'When we see something like this in the general fertility world, it gives us the heebie-jeebies,' said Michael Tucker, a clinical embryologist in Atlanta and leading researcher on infertility treatment.
Tucker added that in his opinion, 'if a medical practitioner had anything to do with it, there's some degree of inappropriate medical therapy there.'
For now, mother and kids are still in the hospital, which has been deluged with flowers, dozens of gift baskets full of eight items for the babies, and calls offering, support, advice or outrage.
'In the first few days, we got calls like 'How dare you do this?' and 'You should have your (medical) license revoked,'' a hospital spokesperson told the Los Angeles Times. 'There were even those few who wished the babies would not survive.'
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Older Talkback
page: 1
Well said, Andy! You took the words right out of my mind. She obviously did not go to a credible doctor to have this done. That, alone, speaks volumes about what kind of mother she really is. Add the fact that she already has six children, is single, and with a non-existent or low income. Then she actually has the nerve to sit back and try to reap the benefits of all the donations and charity she is expecting. A free house, a minivan and all the other freebies commonly showered on multiple-birth families sounds nice. But who, in their right mind, goes to such extremes to get that? She took it upon herself to have all these children, especially in these tough times, and now expects help? This woman has major psychological issues and needs expert help, not donations, book or movie deals, or a reality show. Who is paying all her medical bills? Better yet, where did she come up with enough money to pay for costly fertility treatments and in-vitro to begin with? Bottom line - she is not putting her children's best interests first. The six she already has, nor the poor little 9-week-premature babies struggling to make it. DHS, where are you? And, Grandma, wake up and stop enabling your daughter. If you knew what she was doing, a little intervention would have really helped.
I guess well-educated doesn't necessarily mean smart. There must be a way to weed these lunatics out of the gene pool - and out of egg donor clinics so their DNA ceases to be... These clinics need oversight boards in place and more exhaustive testing on recipients. What is that...13 kids?? If you're doing it right...parenthood...one will eat up all you have if you're paying enough attention to them. Kids deserve all the love they can get...her kids will always be wanting...good luck, world.
It's a double-edged sword indeed. Logical backlash concludes this woman doesn't deserve to cash in on her children like TLC did by creating Frankenstein's monster-- known as Kate Gosselin, from the infamous 'Jon & Kate Plus 8' (who, along with her husband, has twin girls plus sextuplets). Despite the freebies, doing such a show has only harmed the Gosselin children dramatically as a 21st Century Dionne Quintuplets (from Canada). There's even an entire _blog_ to how despicable these 'parents' have become (GosselinsWithoutPity).
On the other hand, her not getting the freebies means putting tax payers on the hook for the medical bills and the cost of raising them... and the cost will be _great_!
But for the sake of the innocent, who never asked to be born, we _must_ turn our head in disgust (repulse?) of this lady trying to whore out her kids in such a manner, even if she wasn't mentally ill. It saves the kids and prevents the next lunatic from trying to implant 10 embryos next time. No demand, no story.
Sickeningly enough, Discovery Communications (owner of TLC) have admitted they've _approached_ Ms. Suleman for a TV show, but they're seeing how 'TV-friendly' she is (their word, not mine). Proof that it's now morphed into The Freak Show Channel. JUST SAY NO!!!!!!!!
Perhaps she'll give birth to an 8-headed monstrosity.
Medical science at its finest.
Well... she might have a psychological obsession with children. But I don't doubt she loves her kids and wanted them. There's no way she went into this WITHOUT knowing she'd reach some level of publicity. But she went to school for child development, which has SOME meaning. And if she really does JUST love kids, then maybe she didn't do it the ''right way''. But who's to say what's the right or wrong way of having children? Or how many is TOO many? It's honestly up in the air, who knows why she did it. If she did it for fame, she's a very dumb woman. Because this didn't make her famous at all, it made her extremely INfamous.
What a nasty little twit. I think she is unfit to be a mother and the children should be removed from her care. She has ruined the lives of 17 people: her children, her parents and her own. If she really cared about her children she would have stopped before 6.
page: 1
rogerFeb 4th, 2009 - 01:51:34
Modern technology is for childless couples and not a tool to get attention and make money. The mother had 6 kids, so why would she go for moee kids?if she loves kids, there are millions of orphans to be taken care of. She now wants money....for kids, she should have spent her money on raising the kids she already had......Roger
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