All the uproar regarding Nadya Suleman’s giving birth to octuplets has gotten me thinking. Should states implement laws disallow a person receiving public assistance to have children while on assistance?

In a way I can see where it might be a good idea for states to actually go through and create laws that prohibit this behavior. There are people who will “game” the system to get more money by increasing the size of their families. With Suleman’s case, she didn’t really need to be having more children, she already had six.

However, as the law says she can have more kids while on public assistance programs, and since the US does not limit the number of embryos that may be implanted in a single in vitro session, it stands to reason that perhaps the system is just as much at fault as Suleman.

Before you start going on and on in the comments about this, hear me out. If the system weren’t designed the way it is, which allowed her to have the children in the first place, it wouldn’t have happened. If the US regulated in vitro fertilization and required that women only be allowed to be implanted with XX number of embryos at once, maybe this wouldn’t have been such an issue. If the state of California or the US (since a lot of public assistance also has federal funding) had placed restrictions on whether or not a person receiving assistance would be permitted to remain on assistance if they had another child, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.

Frankly, I don’t see the point in saying the state should step in and take the kids and adopt them out. It is not illegal to have children, nor is it illegal to be on public assistance. So maybe the laws should change. Maybe it should be illegal for any family to have more than XX number of children. Maybe it should be illegal to be on public assistance if you have more than XX number of children in your family.

Whatever Suleman’s reasoning for wanting to have so many children was, it does not change the fact that although yes, she was at fault for going through with it, there are other people and entities at fault. The system failed for allowing this kind of behavior in the first place. Her doctor failed for not standing up to her and telling her no, he would not implant that many embryos in her at once.

This wasn’t just a fail for one woman – not a just a judgement fail on her part, this was a fail on the part of a system that should know better by now. If there’s a way to game it, it’ll be gamed.

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