Danielle Levy

–better pay a price for freedom than have it curtailed—-It looks like Nadya Suleman, the mother of the octuplets, could have only made her choice in a free society. To the mind of most she chose wrongly. She’s using food stamps, three of her children have disabilities and collect some social security disability payments, and given the prognosis for octuplets in general, possibly more. As a person it may well be that she’s selfish, stubborn, short-sighted, obsessed and unrealistic (if so she’s far from alone) and all this adds up to the fact that since public monies are bound to be involved we are all affected. One can make a case for the fact that she is no different than the Wall Street companies and bankers who after a series of bad judgments required public money not to fail. It does look like nothing but a variation of the same theme. Regardless, I’d rather live in a society where freedom leads to mistakes we all pay for, rather than in one where it may be so curtailed our choices are no longer ours and we no longer have the freedom to make any.

We can’t de-humanize inmates without de-humanizing ourselves–A while back the state of California’s health care for prisoners was so lacking and so deficient, it was turned over to a receiver. The receiver then went to court to ask for $8bil to fix the problem. But California is in a financial hole, even more so than most other states, so now various officials, some with political ambitions, are criticizing the plans of the receiver. The latest attack is a recreation room with space for such things as yoga and art therapy. Calling it spa like, holistic, a gold plated Utopian hospital plan among other descriptions, the governor, along with several other state officials, is strongly objecting. While their objections have to do with the cost, they also have to do with providing criminals with amenities that are much too homelike. The receiver explains it this way, “I’d rather have inmates sitting in a small, relatively empty room practicing yoga than engaging in race riots or gang violence. I’m not exaggerating when I say that’s what can happen when you have overcrowded conditions and don’t provide medical care.” Regardless of consequences, the resistance to providing inmates with amenities continues and some threaten going to court to stop it.
It’s easy to treat inmates as sub-human, and it’s just as easy to forget that when we do, we de-humanize ourselves as well–because the measure of our humanity lies in how we treat each other.

It’s hard to see how the children will receive the parenting they need–Let’s forget the ethical issues surrounding the octuplets, the medical, legal, financial and religious ones, and focus on the day to day lives of the children. My experience is that children thrive with a certain amount of attention, they look, they observe, they mimic, they seem to be sponges for the love around them, being loving back, responding to cuddles, hugs, to what is said to them. Neglect them and their little brain shuts down, or at least stops opening. That’s why protective children services are concerned about this kind of neglect. How is one mother going to attend to fourteen children in a 24-hour cycle? How much time can she give to each, how much attention, more importantly how much energy will she humanly have for each? Let’s say she gets help. Fine, but isn’t the idea for them to bond with the parents, the anchor, thread, continuity in their lives when everything else changes? And in this case since there is only one parent, isn’t that even more important? And what happens to the others when one is ill and needs more attention? Often babies like to be held when they are not well. Even if the mother is the best in the world, I don’t understand how there can be the kind of parenting the children need.
That’s my concern now that those children are here–that and the fact that this mother ought to have realized this.