Taxpayers may have to cover Octuplet Mom's Costs

[sarcasmo]

Source: AP

snip< A big share of the financial burden of raising Nadya Suleman's 14 children could fall on the shoulders of California's taxpayers, compounding the public furor in a s


snip< "From the outside you can tell that this woman was playing the system," host Bryan Suits said on the "Kennedy and Suits" show on KFI-AM. "You're damn right the state should step in and seize the kids and adopt them out."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090212/ap_on_re_us/octuplets

---

Do Psychologist have a term for baby hording?

[Bill McBlueState]

1. Taxpayers cover a lot of costs that don't make any sense

In this case, I don't like the way the woman appears to be taking advantage of the system, but it's not clear how the law should be changed to prevent this situation without hurting people who really need the help.

[jwirr]

10. One thing that could have helped here would be making it illegal

if the people already have children.

[Quantess]

49. Making what illegal? I'll help you carry out that thought.

Making it illegal to get In-Vitro-Fertilization when you already had six kids.

[buczak]

2. why the outrage?

I really don't understand the outage of having government support to help her raise her children?

What are the alternatives? Having them starve? Go without diapers? medical care? physical therapy? Rip the family apart? Bankrupt the family?

No matter what her motivation for having them is less of a concern than looking forward,
Let's be rational and figure something out.

But if government support is the best way to provide for a stable family, I'm all for it.

[Lance_Boyle]

3. you can't have a "stable family" with an unstable mother

The woman is catastrophically selfish, and should not be allowed to ruin those 14 lives she so irresponsibly created.

[krabigirl]

36. well, technically you can, and it's a slippery slope. What defines as unstable?

When will the state then start removing kids from moms with PPD or anxiety? It's woman-hate.

[barb162]

54. That's right.

She'll screw up those kids royally with the mental shape she's in.

[Lucky Luciano]

4. I like th suggestion the radio show host made - they should be taken from

her since she is not competent to be their mother....though the newborns will need her breastfeeding for a while before that should happen.

[dysfunctional press]

5. "though the newborns will need her breastfeeding for a while before that should happen."

how does one woman breastfeed 8 babies?

[Debau2005]

6. She is not

She is using donated milk from what I read this morning. By her own words, she only holds each 45 minutes each day.

[jb5150]

14. hmmmmmmmmmmmm

Maybe some kind of lazy-susan thingy?

[BlueCaliDem]

9. I'm not for taking ANY child from its mother. That would be detrimental

to them in ways some can never fully comprehend. I know this because it happened to me.

I literally loathed my mother, but when she left me when I was 11, I can't say it did me or our hard working father any good because we blamed him for her leaving (although we finally saw it was her fault, not our father's - but only when we were well into our 20's). We constantly searched for a "mother figure" in our lives.

It's hard on the kids that will never blame their mother, but themselves and society for being, as they will see it, abandoned by society.

The "damage" is done. The fertility clinic and doctor should be sued to help recover some of the costs this woman is placing on the California taxpayers and should have to contribute to paying for their care until they're 18.

Although California is suffering with a $42 billion dollar budget gap, we have no choice but to ensure her children are well cared for, like it or not. These children will one day grow up to be adults and if they learn they'd been unfairly punished for their mother's stupidity, we might not see well-adjusted adults in our society.

[jwirr]

11. I agree with you - not only would it be detrimental to the children but

it would set a precedent that if a family cannot afford their children they can be taken away. That is a threat to an awful lot of families today. What is done is done. It cannot be undone.

What we need to do now is set reasonable laws into place that govern the providers of this kind of invetro program. It should have to look at several things before a client is eligible for the program: number of family members existing already, family ability to support the new baby/babies.

[Bette Noir]

17. I wonder where she got the money to pay for the in vitro procedure in the first place.

They don't do that pro bono.

Here are a few suggestions for rules covering IVF:

Never implant more than 4 embryos.

Never implant in a woman who already has 2 or more minor children.

Use the same sort of guidelines that are used for adoptions: stable home situation, adequate income, etc. An unemployed woman, living on the charity of her mother, with obvious, severe emotional deficits, would never be considered as a candidate to adopt a child, so why would she be eligible for IVF?

[kirby]

33. A lawsuit settlement...

IVF and some plastic surgery

[avebury]

21. I disagree

There is nothing wrong with removing children from a home where the parent(s) have serious psychological problems. Did you see the 6 year old daughter in the Dateline Interview. She is one very unhappy child who clearly had an understanding of what is going on. Since they are using donated breast milk Naydia isn't really necessary. By removing the octuplets from her now and adopting them out to 8 loving families it would allow each child to grow up well loved, nurtured, and well taken care of. They are too young to miss their biological mother.

This mother, who tells everyone that her children are everything to her hoarded her earnings and used her money, along with her disability check, to keep popping out babies. Then she used student loans (which are supposed to be used for school) to "feed her family." Student loans should not be used to support a family. If she loves her family so much she should have stopped popping out babies and used most of that money to take care of her family. If you looked up the definition of irresponsible in the dictionary you would probably find her picture next to the word.

It is the height of nerve that she is asking for donations on her website. This woman is financially irresponsible. If her PR firm really wanted to redeem her reputation they would have helped her to set up a trust fund to benefit all of her children, have it managed by an independent third party, not allow her direct access to the fund, payout only upon the review of proper receipts, and be regularly audited. Based upon the volume of money received, some of it should be paid back to the state of California to cover the medical costs for the birth.

I would like to hear more from the Grandmother who would be in a position to tell the public what has been going on. Apparently, the PR firm has put a "gag" on the grandmother. The Grandfather is going back to Iraq as a Contractor supposedly to make money for the family. I think that he is really going there to get away from his crazy daughter and all those children. Iraq probably looks pretty good to him about now.

[BlueCaliDem]

34. Are you a mother? Well, I am. Of three wonderful children.

I did an experiment with my second son when he was just 1 week old. I read somewhere that the child knows its mother's voice from inside the womb, and its mother's scent when it's born.

I tried this on my newborn son laying him in the center of our big bed. My sister and niece helped me. I stood at his right side, my sister and niece at the foot end. We all called his name softly. He was only 1 week old so he couldn't know his name, but they kept calling him.

He didn't react.

Then I called his name ONCE. He immediately turned his head my way. I changed positions with my sister on the other side as he kept looking at the spot where I had stood. Then we all called his name together. He listened for a few moments, then he turned his head my way. We repeated this experiment until he began to cry for me. Then we stopped.

For those times when he was crying and inconsolable, my sisters took him in their arms to hush him, but he wouldn't stop. I took him, and he immediately stopped.

Yes. Many children live seemingly happy lives when adopted, but how many end up looking for their biological mothers when they finally can? Many feel a powerful need to seek out their estranged biological parent as if seeking closure. These are documented facts.

[shanti]

24. well yeah

at the very least, she should have had pre-pregnancy counseling, but i put the blame on the doctor. he's the one who allowed it to happen, and he could have stopped it.

[BlueCaliDem]

35. I blame him too. He should be sued by the State and made to pay

for the care of those 8 children until they turn 18, but I don't subscribe to taking the children from their mother that clearly loves them even if she's an obsessed Jolie fan.

[shanti]

39. this woman is pitiful

but her children are innocent. some things are just not meant to happen tho.

[Hannah Bell]

37. exactly. the extreme case is the trojan horse to step up "discipline" on the rest of the peasants.

& i'm surprised how many du-ers are all for it.

[Lucky Luciano]

12. You are probably right. I guess I am still incredulous and frustrated

by how spectacularly stupid this mother is.

[shanti]

23. not true

they don't need HER for the breastfeeding. human milk is available from donors.

[BlueCaliDem]

40. It's not only about a child's need to breast feed.

It's far deeper than that.

Read my post here where I explain it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3735514&mesg_id=3736066

[slackmaster]

18. Now that the kids are born

Taking care of them will probably cost less in public funds than NOT taking care of them would.

[Regret My New Name]

28. Indeed... but what happens when/if she goes for it again?

Tries to get another six or eight? Do you allow it or stop it? Can she be prevented? Should she? etc...

Looking forward.

[wickerwoman]

29. Right. No one has octuplets on the assumption that the government will take most of them away

She's obviously mentally ill and a baby hoarder but I doubt her thought process went "well, if it doesn't work out CPS can take them and I can screw over the US taxpayers."

She got a massive settlement from workers comp for her back injury and she's in grad school and planning some kind of career. It's not an ideal situation but I don't like the whole presumption of guilt thing. If we're going to start punishing people before they've committed a demonstrable crime then this isn't the country that I want to be living in.

[NavyDavy]

7. these guys are full of it....she gets SSI for a couple of the handicapped

children which is her right and not "mooching", she got paid approximatly 1 million dollars for the NBC interview, her web site raised 60000+ dollars from people who actually have compassion for this woman and she has plenty of support from people around the world, since some of her own country men/women give her very little of it, IMHO.

[Lucky Luciano]

8. wow - really? A million bucks for the NBC interview?

Obviously that helps tremendously. She should use that to hire a couple people to help.

I still think she is a psycho.

[MrsBrady]

13. i thought NBC said they didn't pay her?

[Iliyah]

15. From California

We already knew that.

[slackmaster]

16. My reaction when I saw that in the newspaper this morning was...

NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!

:eyes:

[Mudoria]

19. Was there ever really any doubt who would be picking up the tab?

That is unless her new website asking for donations works out really well for her.

[avebury]

25. Donating money via the website - flushing money down the drain

This woman is totally financially irresponsible. I don't understand why anyone would want to give her access to any money. She chose to keep popping out babies instead of taking the money to feed, clothe and house her family. If there is no independent trust fund operated by a third party which is regularly audited then she should not get so much as one penny. The needs of the many (all those children) far out weigh the needs of the one (psycho-mom).

I would like to see her butt hauled into the state legislature to testify on the use of disability money to fund IVF Treatments and using student loans to supposedly feed her family (I don't know if I would believe her because her mother indicated that her daughter hasn't provided any financial support for her family. The daughter's own statements would lend doubt as well). Even if they cannot do anything to her it would be worth it to let everyone know exactly what she did or didn't do and perhaps help to create new legislation.

Issues to look at:
Disability payments should not be used for IVF Treatments.
School loans should be used for only school loans.
IVF treatments should be better regulated, for example, limiting the maximum number of eggs for each implementation). She talks about her depression when she started having IVF treatments. Why wasn't her mental health issued reviewed more thoroughly? There should be more thorough mental health screenings as well as more thorough family background checks. If a woman or family is not employed and/or on public assistance there should be a limit as to how much access they have to IVF clinics.
We should be looking at how disability is awarded and how it is monitored. She claimed that she had a serious back injury but that didn't stop her from popping out baby after baby. If she was able to keep popping out baby after baby her back problem couldn't have been that serious and disability payments should have been cut off.

[Tansy_Gold]

44. Federal education loans are issued to cover living expenses

as well as direct costs such as tuition, books, lab fees, etc.

This applies to students who are living on campus in facilities provided by the school as well as students living off campus or at home.

Student loans are disbursed for the student to use as she/he chooses.

Just so you know.



TG

[jb5150]

20. Even if she makes a couple of million

from donations or tv appearances, the cost of raising that many children is astronomical.

[skeewee08]

22. I saw the pictures of her older children and they look adorable:-)

they shouldn't have to suffer none of them, I hope she gets support from friends' and what about the father? Do we know anything about him?

[avebury]

26. 6 year old daughter looked very unhappy

In the Dateline interview the 6 year old daughter looked very unhappy and came across very smart for her age. She is not happy about all the new brothers and sisters (there will be a lot of crying) and stated that her mother would be really stressed). - This from a 6 year old.

I wondered if the little boy that was interviewed was the child with ADHD he looke pretty active.

[Bryn]

27. Were eggs all hers?

I haven't seen it anywhere if those babies came from her own eggs or egg donors? All children have one same father? She was married. Then I read that it was her ex boyfriend who was sperm donor for all kids. I am confused here.

[Lance_Boyle]

38. she was never married.

Former boyfriend wanted to marry her, she refused so she could "have a family on her own." Don't be surprised if she tries to hold him up for support, even though he never knew about use of his donated gametes for her 8-tacular latest in-vitro stint. She is a lunatic, and we'd all be better of if she just offed herself and let the state care for her murder of crows. The state's on the hook for their care anyway, and she'll just skim from it to pop out more. Fuck her.

[LisaL]

50. Not true. She was married.

But her ex-husband is not the father of the children.

[barb162]

47. She said they were all hers in one of the interviews and some

man she knows is the same donor for all the children. The NBC Dateline interview

[lunatica]

30. So is it crickets from the church?

Whey aren't they helping her? She's gotta be their dream poster mother. She's given birth to what would have been snowflake babies. Aren't a lot of Christians going around saying they'll adopt snowflake babies.

[Javaman]

31. you got to understand, it's before that the brood was born that was their concern...

after they are shot out, it's not their concern anymore. fundie values, after all, have to have a limit.

[kskiska]

45. Diamond Bar church offers aid to octuplets' mom

DIAMOND BAR - The Whittier mother of octuplets who for weeks has had an army of media tracking her every move might soon have some reinforcements of her own.

Baby sitters, that is.

The women's ministry at Calvary Chapel in Diamond Bar will be rounding up volunteers to help Nadya Suleman, 33, care for the newborns when the octuplets are released from the hospital, church pastor Rex Wolins said Wednesday. The volunteers also will help with Suleman's six other children.

The news comes days after reports emerged that Suleman had attended Calvary Chapel in the past.

(snip)

(Rev.) Wolins said he didn't know Suleman before the media storm that followed her octuplets' birth and hadn't heard about her connection to Calvary Chapel until it surfaced in the news.

He has never seen Suleman, and to Wolins' knowledge, neither has anyone else at Calvary.

But that's beside the point, he said.

"We just know this person is extremely hurting ... and this church wants to take care of needs, whether she did or she didn't attend this church," Wolins said.

more…
http://www.whittierdailynews.com/news/ci_11682708

[barb162]

51. Oh, thanks for that.

Evangelical, huh?

[barb162]

48. What church? What religion?

What's a snowflake baby?

[jmowreader]

55. A snowflake baby is not what these are

Snowflake babies are produced by adopting frozen embryos.

[GinaMaria]

32. Taxpayers often pay for mental health services too

I wish this woman had gotten some help prior to having 14 kids under the age of 7. Seems as though this was missed by family and health care providers. Don't know how she slipped through like this. It is sad for everyone involved. Certainly, the outcome was not ideal, but it did bring some much needed attention to her situation.

The outrage is a common response to the behavior associated to unrecognized mental illness. This is a family in distress and who need help and treatment.

[barb162]

52. Probably the first two or so, no one thought anything was that weird.

She had the money to do it too.

[Patchuli]

41. I think it's morally wrong

to have a litter of children when you have no means of support other than loans but the part about "adopt(ing) them out" really gets me. Speaking from the adoptee's POV, that's not always a solution that is 'best for the child' either. I agree with other posters that the irresponsible and greedy doctor and clinic should have to legally assist in supporting these kids until they are 18. And I think their irresponsible mother should be the one doing the work caring for these little lives she brought into this world so lightly. And Grandma should help because she should have committed her daughter a long time ago! I never would have dreamed that someone would need pregnancy intervention!

[CountAllVotes]

42. think of all of the money she'll get under the stimulus plan

lets see - 14 children X $250.00 a pop plus and extra $250 for herself.

And then all of the extra food stamp money.

My gawd, she'll be hauling in a load soon!

Lucky breeder!

:dem:

[Lagomorph]

43. Go after the fathers....

all of them!

[barb162]

46. Narcissistic Personality Disorder and OCD

Probably throw in Anti-Social Disorder too with all that lying she does.

[EFerrari]

53. I'm much more mad about Dick Cheney's spree in Iraq. n/t