Maybe we do need to legislate “Morality”
The media often has a double play on events. They can be both the “Builder and The Wrecking Ball”.
This is not the first time we have seen 6, 7 and 8 children being born at a time from fertility doctors. In the past, the media has served a public purpose when these quadruplets and above were of natural birth. The media attention to them attracts corporate sponsors with help in the form of free products and money.
It is expensive enough to raise just one child. I see reports that the cost of raising these 8 will be over a million a year. True or not, I think we can agree that it is likely to be more than 3 times the income of the average family where both spouses work and would still only have a minimal quality of life.
So lets be blunt about this and just state what’s easily seen.
A woman with six kids, no job and no money embarked on a marketing play using the media (in builder mode) and those that would “help”, to gain personally from all the help that is provided by both the public and public assistance.
The doctor(s) involved are directly responsible morally but not legally. To their defense, there is no pre-requisite to having the ability to raise children as a test to preform fertility procedures. If there was, there would be three times more law suites than doctors currently contend with. That is not to say that any are not justified.
The government can’t make a rule here without stirring-up the Liberals on the Left or the Churches and Religion on the Right. And to add insult to injury, they all agree this is wrong and something needs to be done to prevent it in the future.
No easy answers for anyone.
Now that the media is in “wrecking ball” mode, what about these 8 newborns. They do deserve a decent life as it is not their fault that their mother has brought them into this world in a troubling way that is sure to haunt them for the rest of their life as the media will surely follow their lives from now on.
Those that would tell you, “you can not legislate morality” are wrong. They just do not want to be the ones to do it. It is a political cop-out for politically sensitive issues. It is morally wrong to kill but we have laws for that even though many states find it moot and are involved in it themselves.
Perhaps the states should take the issue up as it is unlikely the Federal Government will.