The arrival of octuplets into an already financially-strained family with six children has caused a fair amount of shock and outrage. The search for solutions has been largely legalistic and regulatory: what kind of laws and policies can we put in place to make sure that this doesn't happen again? Concerning the profession of infertility treatments, these are the correct types of questions. The actions of Nadya Suleman, however, are indicative of a larger problem in our society, which can't be solved by government intervention or enforcement.
Let me begin with a trite-itude (no, that is not a real word): When you live in a democracy, you have certain freedoms--these freedoms, however, come with certain obligations. These obligations are usually understood to be political: one should vote, one should be informed of important local, national, and international issues, etc. These obligations, however, also entail an understanding of the way in which your community functions: what balances must be maintained in order for the community itself to be sustainable? What must I do in order to sustain these balances? What must I abstain from in order to prevent upsetting these balances?
In a society where freedom is paramount, a significant obligation rests on the individual to understand (and to care) about the effects of their action on the wider community. Our government is not our mother or father (who protected us from harm to our self and others), but there is a widespread assumption that if I can do something, then, in the end, I will be okay and everyone else will be okay as well: because it is legal, I do not need to think about larger ramifications. Among many other things, Nadya Suleman lacks a sense of belonging to and responsibility towards a larger community.
Here's another example to consider: an upper middle-class couple adopts a dozen children from an impoverished African country. They've done their homework: financially, they can afford to house, feed, clothe, and educate these children without state assistance. A moral action? The story continues...
Well, the one thing that these parents can't afford out of their own pockets is health care, particularly because a sizable number of these children are probably HIV positive. But that's okay because they have a fantastic group health plan which will cover these costs for their children.
The problem is that the payments and the funds available in the group health plan have been calculated based on statistical approximations of what kind of costs the population insured will incur. When a dozen malnurished, likely-HIV positive children with loads of other probable health problems are added to the mix, the statistics soar--the probable health care costs for these children are not only far more than what the plan had estimated for dependents--the costs would literally consume all assets, drowning the health plan, and taking down the family and every other enrolled person with it. Eventually, everyone would lose.
Could there be another way? I would hope so. Maybe wealthy donors could be found to pay for some of the health care costs. The point is, however, that the parents knew their rights and entitlements (their right to adopt, the entitlement of their dependents to have health care), and they assumed that their community would be able to provide these entitlements and remain sustainable.
The octuplets' hospital has applied to Medi-Cal, California's Medicare program, for reimbursement for the cost of care for the premature babies. The actual cost has not been disclosed, but we can bet that it is astronomical. Who knows what kind of strain it will place on Medi-Cal? Will there be people who don't get health care because of the octuplets' costs?
In human history, there are very few uncomplicated examples of being completely and entirely morally wrong: the NAZIs are a contemporary popular favorite. Nadya Suleman's choices can now be added to that list, not because the immorality of her actions in any way measure up to that of the NAZIs, but because it is almost impossible to find any moral justification them. She's an easy target.
I must say, however, that there were a few moments during her interview with Ann Curry when she had me on her side: "I'm providing myself to my children. I'm loving them unconditionally, accepting them unconditionally. Everything I do, I'll stop my life for them and be present with them. And hold them. And be with them. And how many parents do that? I'm sure there are many that do, but many don't. And that's unfortunate. That is selfish." Suleman may be all kinds of crazy, but I believe that she truly believes this. Although she somehow lacks the foresight to understand that her situation will likely make it difficult to parent adequately, she at least conceives of and commits herself to that objective. Her grasp of a fundamental part of the picture is correct: she just doesn't see its place in the wider tableau.
In some ways the family with a dozen adopted African children is similar--they clearly have an understanding of wider global injustice, and they felt moved to do their part. They made a connection between a global crisis and their own family, but still this was only a small part of the picture. They missed the full impact that their choices would have on their community.
The actions of this family are not as easy to criticize as those of Nadya Suleman. She is a simple problem; whereas, they are a more complex one. It takes a different level of thought to sift through their actions, than it does to criticize Nadaya Suleman, yet the two situations are tied together by the inability of the actors to reach a certain level of critical thought. Nadaya Suleman and the adoptive parents got the simple questions right: "What does a good parent do?" "Is it just for innocent children in Africa to starve and die due to lack of resources and health care?" Suleman is (somewhat) capable of reasoning on the minute scale of child-parent interactions, whereas the adoptive parents are capable of reasoning on a child-parent-family level as well as a global level. The level that is glaringly absent is that of local and regional community. Why would this level be absent? Because it requires a much more sophisticated type of reasoning--it is an "ill-structured" problem.
Communities survive through an often tenuous balance of anticipated need and actual need. Resources (often too few resources) are collected to address that anticipated need. If you make a choice that will greatly increase the actual need, you have a civil obligation to understand the ramifications of that choice and to be actively involved in the process of creating an equilibrium between resources and needs.