HAVE AN OPINION ON THE NADYA SULEMAN 14 CHILDREN ETHICAL DEBATE CONTROVERSY AROUND THE WORLD?

Angela Suleman said her daughter always had trouble conceiving and underwent in vitro fertilization treatments because her fallopian tubes are "plugged up."

There were frozen embryos left over after her previous pregnancies and her daughter didn't want them destroyed, so she decided to have more children.

Her mother and doctors have said the woman was told she had the option to abort some of the embryos and, later, the fetuses. She refused.

Her mother said she does not believe her daughter will have any more children.

"She doesn't have any more (frozen embryos), so it's over now," she said. "It has to be."

Nadya Suleman wanted to have children since she was a teenager, "but luckily she couldn't," her mother said.

"Instead of becoming a kindergarten teacher or something, she started having them, but not the normal way," he mother said.

Her daughter's obsession with children caused Angela Suleman considerable stress, so she sought help from a psychologist, who told her to order her daughter out of the house.

"Maybe she wouldn't have had so many kids then, but she is a grown woman," Angela Suleman said. "I feel responsible and I didn't want to throw her out."

Yolanda Garcia, 49, of Whittier, Calif., said she helped care for Nadya Suleman's autistic son three years ago.

"From what I could tell back then, she was pretty happy with herself, saying she liked having kids and she wanted 12 kids in all," Garcia told the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

"She told me that all of her kids were through in vitro, and I said 'Gosh, how can you afford that and go to school at the same time?"' she added. "And she said it's because she got paid for it."

Garcia said she did not ask for details.

Nadya Suleman holds a 2006 degree in child and adolescent development from California State University, Fullerton, and as late as last spring she was studying for a master's degree in counselling, college spokeswoman Paula Selleck told the Press-Telegram.

Her fertility doctor has not been identified. Her mother told the Los Angeles Times all the children came from the same sperm donor but she declined to identify him.

Birth certificates reviewed by The Associated Press identify a David Solomon as the father for the four oldest children. Certificates for the other children were not immediately available.

The news that the octuplets' mother already had six children sparked an ethical debate.

Source: AP

Let's hear your views in the comments field.

A FLASHBACK I ALWAYS THANK GOD FOR!!!

December 22, 1998
Web posted at: 10:40 p.m. EST (0340 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Last year it was seven babies. This year it's eight.

As the mother of the world's first known set of surviving octuplets was moved out of intensive care Tuesday, doctors and ethicists are raising more and more questions about the increase in multiple births.

The mother of the octuplets, Nkem Chukwu, is in stable condition at Houston's St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital after undergoing surgery Monday to stop internal bleeding.

All but one of the eight babies -- six girls and two boys -- remain on ventilator systems. All are in critical but stable condition, and doctors remained optimistic about their chances Tuesday, said Leonard Weisman, the doctor treating the newborns.

The mother had taken fertility drugs. When it was discovered she was carrying multiple fetuses, she was offered the opportunity to abort some of them, but she declined for "religious and personal" purposes, Weisman said.

"We've continued to support her decision and to care for the babies that are born," he said.

Professionals in the field of reproduction say fertility drugs can be difficult to control.

"There are a lot of physicians trying to deal with this problem and decrease the likelihood that this will happen," said Dr. Keith Eddleman of Mount Sinai-NYU Medical Center in New York. "The problem is the technology is not perfect. They can't control the number of children they have."

Ethicists say being pregnant with so many babies forces women to make difficult moral and ethical decisions.

"They have to choose between three conflicting values -- their own health, in having to carry so many fetuses; the health of their fetuses; and the moral values of whether or not you have to abort one or more of those fetuses," said Larry Gostin, of Georgetown University.

Doctors say the generally healthy McCaughey septuplets were the exception rather than the rule. Many premature babies, such as the Houston octuplets, are much smaller and face greater dangers.

"Many of these children are going to have profound handicaps throughout their lives -- both physical and mental handicaps," Gostin said.

Ethicists say the public needs stricter guidelines. But many reproductive experts say it's difficult to pass regulations to prevent this kind of pregnancy. They add that until fertility drugs are perfected, high-multiple pregnancies will sometimes be unavoidable -- and if a woman chooses not to abort some of the fetuses, there is nothing anyone can do.

Source: CNN Archives

BREAKING NEWS: BELLFLOWER OCTUPLETS MOM REPORTEDLY "ALREADY HAS SIX CHILDREN."

The unnamed mother is still recovering in hospital after the arrival of the six boys and two girls on Monday.

All eight are doing well and breathing on their own at the Kaiser Permanente's Bellflower Medical Center in southern California, despite being born nine weeks premature.

As four of the babies started bottle feeding, speculation grew over whether the multi-birth was natural.

Two people claiming to be grandparents of the octuplets rang a radio station and disclosed that the mother had six other children.

Medical experts said questions would be asked if it emerged that a woman with six children received fertility treatment.

Michael Tucker, a researcher on fertility treatment in America, told reporters: "If a medical practitioner had anything to do with it there's some degree in inappropriate medical therapy there.

"When we see something like this in the general fertility world, it gives us the heebie jeebies."

Forty eight hours after their birth, the mother had still not been able to hold any of the babies, who were born weighing between one pound, eight ounces and three pounds, four ounces.

In lieu of names, the babies have been given letters ranging from A to H, in the order of their birth.

The babies' incubators were being kept near one another in the same room for bonding, according to Miriam Khoury, clinical director of inpatient obstetrical nursing at the hospital.

America's first live-birth octuplets were born three months premature in Houston in 1998.

The smallest baby, who was born at 10.3 ounces, died of heart and lung failure a week after being born but the others survived.

Mother Nkem Chukwu and father Iyke Louis Udobi had used fertility drugs in the pregnancy.

It is also being reported that the new mom is Hispanic. Once again congrats to her!

UPDATE: Her name is Nadya Suleman, a 33 year old divorcee and a single mom.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

More of this Breaking Story

• Octuplet mom now has 14 kids (The Sun U.K)
• Calif Octuplets doing very well (AP)