Octuplets + 6 kids + No Job = Why Am I Paying For This?

[joeactor]

Hi Gang,

The whole story of the Octuplets mom has struck a nerve.
Lemme get this right:  She's got 6 kids, no job, lives with her parents, and somehow can afford to have fertility treatments and come to term with 8 more kids?  Whaaaaaaaa????

Just who's responsible for this?
The mother?  Her mother?  The doctor?  The sperm donator?

Will she get book deals and publicity?  Yes, and that is just another log on my WTF fire...

Come with me on a journey to the mythical Facist state of JoeLandia!
Where the entire society is sterilized, and you must prove you can be a responsible parent *before* you get pregnant (there's a concept).  There's be classes and tests to help ensure that a person is ready to be a parent.  Once you pass the test, you're "unsterilized" until the blessed event happens.

 :hide:

Many questions: Who would administer the test to become a parent?  What would the requirements be?  How do you sterilize everyone (air, water, etc)?  Would this spawn a black market in non-sterility drugs?

Let's just think about the pros and cons:

pro: population control
pro: more resources for all
pro: less health care issues
pro: better quality of life for each child
pro: I'd feel better about my tax dollars goint to support a society of responsible adults

con: Facist state needed (look at me!  I'm controlling your reproductive parts!)
con: criteria for being allowed to propagate hard to manage (can you say "master race"?)
con: lawsuits, revolt, collapse of society as we know it

So, how's about it?

What pros and/or cons can you see here?

It's never gonna happen, but that doesn't mean we can't discuss it.

"If you don't have a dream, how you gonna make a dream come true?",
JoeActor

[Will]

Part of me agrees with your frightening, totalitarian option regarding parenting. God knows (err.. the atheist equivalent) that your average parents is completely unprepared and likely will screw up in major ways. Still, I can't bring myself to accept that somehow any organization or body should have the power to allow or disallow parenthood. Except in-laws.

What should happen is what should have been happening all along: parents, as you learn how to parent teach your children. Grandparents, please teach your kids what you learned. And, perhaps most importantly, mating isn't necessary for the survival of a species that boasts a population of over 6 billion. We're just fine, so if you don't think you should be a parent then by all means enjoy your life in some other way.

BTW, VERY funny article about the irresponsible mother:
http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/homework ... ranju.aspx

[pedricero matao]

Dude, you just stroke right on somethin that has been in my brain for some time.
Let me explain: my sister-in-law just had a baby like two weeks ago or so. She's kinda something we call here "maruja", em... submissive and (functional, i guess) illiterate housewife, who literally lives for her husband. Her husband (that is, my partner's brother) is a bit like something you could call a spanish redneck: a security guard obsessed with guns (phallic issues here maybe?) and that i'm-harder-than-you crap. One time i was dining at their house, and suddenly without any aparent reason apart from showing his macho-ism, he threatened "to get out his rifle and shoot me". Of course here we have gun control, so nobody has guns at home - he was talking about an airsoft toy gun-.
I have posed myself a similar question, like "oh sh*t poor little girl, she isn't even born and chances are her life is already screwed up... how come do "they" let people like this to have babies???"

It's quite a delicate matter. Now reading myself i sound like a nazi  
Also the whole thing sounds a bit like eugenics...
Of course that everyone has the right to have children, but dammit, there are some people, the kind that you just ask yourself how they figured out "how to make babies", and what kind of education will they be giving to their children. Will they be turned into oppressors or into oppressed?
Mandatory sex education? Flyers on birth control?

Creepy stuff (i mean all the thing about castrating people)

[Kylyssa]

It strikes a nerve with me, too.  She somehow has the right to breed like flies and get her fertility treatments and medical costs plus her living costs paid for when millions of Americans can't even see a doctor when they're sick.

[joeactor]

It strikes a nerve with me, too.  She somehow has the right to breed like flies and get her fertility treatments and medical costs plus her living costs paid for when millions of Americans can't even see a doctor when they're sick.

Abso-frickin-lutely!  I'd rather have some kind of "mental health for the homeless" program than support this woman's "choice".

I dunno.  At least adoption has some rules and hoops you have to jump thru before they hand you a kid.

Will: great article - money where your mouth is kinda stuff.

pedricero matao: hmmm... guns and kids... you think that combo would cancel itself out in the long run ;-)

If you like JoeLandia rule number 27 about kids, you'll probably also like rule 13: mandatory testing to get into the country... and to stay in the country!

JoeLandia: we put the You in eugenics

[McQ]

It strikes a nerve with me, too.  She somehow has the right to breed like flies and get her fertility treatments and medical costs plus her living costs paid for when millions of Americans can't even see a doctor when they're sick.

I immediately thought of you after someone remarked to me on this story, that the "Octopussy" deserved help with her health care now. Agh! Deserves health care? Come again? I thought, "No, she doesn't deserve it, but I know someone who does deserve some."

Then I said it. Out loud. Big to do after that.  :brick:

oh yeah, Joe, you can go ahead and start JoeLandia. We'll call you Il Duce 2. But you have to shave your head.

[curiosityandthecat]

Protip: it's a vagina; not a clown car.

[McQ]

Protip: it's a vagina; not a clown car.

[Ihateyoumike]

Protip: it's a vagina; not a clown car.

[Whitney]

I almost want to say that people who have kids and can't afford them should have the kids taken away into foster care.  If we took the money these parents probably waste on stuff other than their children (like more in vitro services?) and gave it to the foster care program then the kids would end up better off in foster care.    But chronically being out of work when the parent could work means the parent can't properly care for their child and is unfit.  If we weren't in the practice of handing out money and supplies to financially unfit parents then their kids wouldn't survive.  There would, of course, have to be exceptions for parents that are just down on their luck otherwise it would be a very cruel law.  We take kids away for other reasons, how would this be differnet?

[VanReal]

Yes, this was very interesting.  Not only is she manipulating the welfare and Medicaid system she also apparently found her funding from using the workers comp system and used her payoff from IBS (an impairment rating system) to have the "implants" done.  Seems to me that plastic surgeons are supposed to send people to counseling when they've reached a point of having too many procedures, why was this doctor not held to the same standard?  The gliche in her plan I see is that welfare isn't set up for paying for more than 3 children, something Clinton did right when he tried to remove the lucrative nature of breeding.

I'm all for JoLandia.  Any time you can jump on the internet and google "children for adoption" and actually go through an online list of details and pictures of the kiddos that are available we have a major problem.  We spay and neuter our pets (well the responsible people at least) to help control the unwanted population, I don't see a huge difference.  Then again, that doesn't really work either because I can look outside at any given time and see kitties running around scrounging.  Too bad we do the same thing to our kids.

[joeactor]

Ah, the sweet sound of sane thinkers!

Love the Duggers photo too ;-)

Well, I'm still upset, but somehow I feel better now...

JoeActor - Future Benevolent Ruler of JoLandia

[curiosityandthecat]

People should be subject to mandatory sterilization at age ten. When they become sufficiently mature and financially well-off enough, they should be allowed to have children. We also need to institute a limit to the number of children people can have.

Now, where's my soma...

[SSY]

JoLandia sounds lovley. Your ideas intrigue me, I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

[s0cks]

I cannot believe what some of you are posting...

People should be allowed to have as many children as they want. But they shouldn't get outside support/money. If they can't handle it then the children can be taken away and put into care/adoption or they may, unfortuantly, live a very harsh childhood. We can't sympathize for all of these people or their children as we then start to get caught up in this socialist mess to try and "fix" everything and make everything "good". It just doesn't work.

At the end of the day its a human right to have children. Its only because of the society that we have built up, that people can get away with having so many kids, and the fact that we have to support them is another "perk" of modern society. Blame the system.