Strollerderby

Browse by Tags

• Eight Babies for the Price of One?

  Commenters on my posts about the Suleman octuplet situation and on Madeline Holler's post about the problem of fertility clinics breaking the rules pointed out that a big elephant in the room of this discussion is healthcare, insurance and the cost of fertility treatment in the United States.  In countries that more carefully regulate the number of embryos doctors can transfer into women, healthcare is universal and access to at lest some fertility treament is covered by it.  In the United States, it is rare to find a health insurance policy that covers fertility treatment of any kind, rarer still to find a policy that covers IVF, which can run from $7,000 to $15,000 per try depending on the drugs needed and procedures used. When couples have double-mortgaged their houses to come up with the cash out of pocket for a round of IVF, it must be awfully tempting to increase their odds by transferring more than one--or two---or three embryos in a single cycle. Guess what?  No one is Read More... Posted Feb 22 2009, 08:01 PM by Shannon LC Cate with | with 7 comment(s) Filed under: Bioethics, multiple births, medical ethics, fertility treatment, Shannon LC Cate, IVF babies, Nadya Suleman, Octomom, suleman octuplets, high order multiples, high risk pregnancy

• Nadya Suleman's Gift to Society: A Cautionary Tale

  After my post last week about why I don't hate Nadya Suleman, quite a few people insisted on the importance of personal responsibility in the blame-game about who bears the responsibility for the octuplet debacle.  (Because while I'm as glad as anyone that the babies are all alive and relatively well, "debacle" it is, for so many reasons...) I'm sticking to my guns and insisting right back that a woman as compromised in decision-making as Nadya Suleman obviously is (for whatever reason or reasons) deserves the help of society in making decisions as major as whether or not to have a high risk pregnancy (which the transfer of 6 embryos invites), let alone whether or not to bring multiple children of fragile health into the world with few resources at her disposal for their care. Now I am passionately pro-choice.  And as a lesbian whose right   Read More... Posted Feb 20 2009, 09:46 AM by Shannon LC Cate with | with 27 comment(s) Filed under: Bioethics, multiple births, medical ethics, fertility treatment, Shannon LC Cate, IVF babies, Nadya Suleman, Octomom, suleman octuplets, high order multiples, high risk pregnancy