By Ingrid Burger
Arizona Daily Wildcat
December 1, 1997

Baby makers cause unhealthy boom

Arizona Daily Wildcat Ingrid Burger

I've always pictured myself getting married and having a family one day.

First I'd find the man. Next would come the dog. Then the requisite 2.5 kids. Maybe 3 would be nice. But no more. With the current overpopulation problem, the rising cost of raising a child and a simple desire to keep my sanity, 3 children is just about as many as I'd want to handle. That's why thinking about the woman who recently gave birth to septuplets makes both my head and my ovaries ache.

A couple of weeks ago, Bobbi and Kenny McCaughey of Des Moines, Iowa received not one, not two, but SEVEN little bundles of joy. If all the babies survive, it will be the largest number of successful births from one pregnancy in recorded history. Pretty amazing. And scary. Can you imagine changing seven diapers, spooning peach mush into seven mouths, potty training seven bladders? Every baby-maintenance chore would take seven times as long and cost seven times as much. There'd be nonstop crying and no parental sleep for at least the first 10 months. Why would the good Lord lay such an enormous challenge before two parents?

The answer lies somewhere in the fact that the conception of septuplets wasn't entirely the work of the big guy upstairs. Mrs. McCaughey conceived with the help of the latest in fertility technology. She paid for and was given drugs to make her more likely to get pregnant. They worked a little better than expected.

Hundreds of couples today are reaping the benefits of fertility treatment. Drugs which stimulate ovulation and induce multiple births are part of an estimated $4 billion a year business. It's a true blessing that people who cannot conceive by more natural methods are now able to have children of their own. But what many don't realize is that fertility technology is a long way off from being perfect or even predictable. One woman could spend several years and thousands of dollars trying to get pregnant to no avail. Another could end up carrying three or four fetuses when she only wanted one. Often, doctors will implant several fertilized eggs into a woman's uterus, hoping that one of them will be viable. There's no telling how many will thrive and how many won't make it. There's a big lack of control over this stuff.

When Mrs. McCaughey found that she was carrying seven fetuses, she was given the option of "selective reduction." This process involves injecting a chemical into the womb which causes the mother's body to absorb some of the fetuses. She declined, saying she didn't believe in this kind of "abortion." Fortunately, all seven of her babies were born healthy - at least as healthy as premature septuplets breathing on ventilators can be. But the odds were stacked heavily against this.

In the interest of protecting the health of her children, Mrs. McCaughey should have reduced the number of fetuses she was carrying. And we should consider putting laws which limit the amount of babies conceived with fertility technology in place.

Multiple-birth babies are much more likely to be born premature, have chronic health problems or die shortly after birth. To put it in economic terms, if you go for quantity, you're apt to sacrifice quality. By giving women the means to conceive five, six or seven fetuses, doctors are facilitating the creation of children whom they know will have a low chance at survival or good health. This can't be a desirable thing. On the flip side, imposing a limit on the number of babies a woman can bring to term seems a gross violation of reproductive rights and individual control over the body. I still think that without some restrictions on fertility technology, we plant the seeds of tragedy, ill health and economic strain on society.

The birth of the McCaughey septuplets is a true miracle. The real fun will begin when they can live outside the intensive care unit and go home. There's already a complimentary lifetime supply of diapers and apple sauce from excited corporations awaiting their arrival. But amidst the awe and celebration, we should ask ourselves where the balance between reproductive control and children's health lies. Is it going to take the death of a future set of medically-induced multiplets (which is much more likely than their survival) for people to realize the dangers of such births?

It will be interesting to see how reproductive policy develops in the next few years. For now, all this talk about babies is making me cranky. Forget the fertility drugs and pass the perfume and SlimFast. I'm still workin' on finding the man.

Ingrid Burger is a senior majoring in molecular and cellular biology.