A few days ago a mother in Southern California gave birth to octuplets..... 8 babies!! She had 6 boys and 2 girls, 9 weeks premature. I would be scared to death to have a baby at 30 weeks (which is right where I am right now with this pregnancy!!). But I would also be beside myself if I were having 8! Heck, I don't know if I could manage twins or triplets!
But the thing that really caught me off gaurd and made me stop and think was the fact that women who are carrying more than 3 babies are routinely recommended to go through "selective reduction" or aborting one or more babies so the number is increase to just one or two babies. I had never heard of this before and I was shocked! I guess I shouldn't have been...abortion has been around for a long time, and many girls and women have had abortions. But for a doctor to recommend reducing the number....it really threw me off. I started thinking, what would I do? What if I were carrying several babies? How could you ever make that decision?
But, how many are too many? In many of the cases in which women have gotten pregnant with large sets of multiples they have been on fertility treatments. I have to wonder if these women are told the risks of possibly having to kill some of their unborn before they try to get pregnant. I found an article online that said that the rate of survival for quadruplets was 70% and that 50% of these are likely to have some type of disibility. That in and of itself is scarey! I think it's wonderful that we have technology to help women get pregnant when they can't on their own, but shouldn't we have some way to help women get pregnant with just one or two babies? In my opinion, 8 is way too many. But I don't think I could ever abort any of my babies.
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