Eight Is Not Enough? The Big Families We Love to Hate

It’s often a funny thing when right and left agree, as did many vocal commentators across the ideological spectrum this week in condemning Nadya Suleman, the mother of the California octuplets conceived by in vitro fertilization and delivered last week by a team of 46 doctors and nurses. Such a large number of multiple births is so rare, many media reports pointed out, that only one previous example of octuplets exists in U.S history. It’s also so rare that Microsoft Word’s spellcheck doesn’t recognize the word “octuplet,” as several online commenters reported. This response in itself, speaking to the volumes of Internet opinionating the octuplets have inspired, gives some indication of how completely the controversy has transformed from a story based in solid facts – of which there are still very few so far – into the latest projection screen for fertility and childbirth controversies.

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