The Duggars is a feel good story in the same way that John Carpenter's "The Thing" is, which is to say it's very very creepy. Maybe it's not as bad as this story, but I maintain that the fact that you can AFFORD to recreate a homespun version of the town of Stepford underneath a single roof does not mean you should do so.

Er, how is "The Duggars" a feel-good tale? Do we really think that they're less "obsessed with children" than this mother? They're only doing it the natural way, but the strain on the planet's resources, and the country's financial ones, is the same in the end.

This won't be a "feel good" story like the others cited? I don't see why those were feel good stories, either. There are TOO MANY PEOPLE on this planet.

Mrs. Duggar is frighteningly reminiscent of the Terry Jones mother from Monty Python's Meaning of Life "Every Sperm Is Sacred" bit. Stepford is downright homey in comparison to the Duggar freakshow.

My question: has TLC (aka What The Fuck? Television) signed up Nadya Suleman yet?

I just can't shake this story out of my head. On every possible level it's just bizarre. I read that the grandmother (who is taking care of the six original kids while the 8mom is in the hospital) told her daughter that she would be gone when the new mother came home from the hospital but then I read that the kids and mother lived in the grandma's house.

It really seems like the doctors have some explaining to do.

I feel no need to pass any judgement on this woman; she will definitely be made aware of what she has done. I had three kids spread over eight years and that was demanding. sheesh......

Why do feminists feel an attack on a mother is an attack on motherhood? Is it not possible to disapprove of this mother's decisions while still respecting mothers in general?

How is she paying for it? What kind of doctor would agree to this? Has this woman had any kind of psych eval? Can the kids (all of them) be put in protective custody? Could a judge order her to get a tubal ligation? Can the doctor have his or her license revoked?

I'm still trying to figure out how this woman's decisions -- bizarre as I personally find them to be -- are any of our business. She's not on welfare and as far as I can tell she's not the one publicizing the story. The media practically broke down her door to get the story, and having done that, are holding her up for public ridicule and amateur psychoanalysis.

Really, Broadsheet -- isn't the right to choose ultimately about a woman's ability to make her own decisions about her childbearing? People are talking about the doctor's actions being unethical, but isn't it also unethical to deny someone a medical procedure simply because the doctor doesn't approve of a woman's choices? Broadsheet has been (rightly) critical of doctors who refuse fertility treatments to lesbians. When is it okay for a doctor to use anything beyond purely medical criteria to decide if a woman should have a child?

...do any kind of psychological screening? And who the heck paid for this woman's treatment--that service is far from cheap. This woman either has the worst case of baby rabies in known history--or she's the breeding equivalent of all those plastic-surgery addicts who can't stop hacking themselves up.

Any single mother who already has six kids, has filed for bankruptcy, and is living with her parents, is right on the edge of being able to responsibly raise them. The appalling selfishness that leads her to add eight more pushes her far over that edge.

She is an unfit mother. Take all the children away. All fourteen of them, not just the eight new ones.

Who paid for the weeks in the hospital? Who paid for the surgery for the caesarian births? Who is paying for the weeks of extensive hospital care the children are receiving? Her father was forced to come out of retirement and take a job in Iraq in order to pay for her and her existing six children. She certainly has not been earning any income for quite some time.

This is truly disgusting. Why was this even allowed to happen? The doctor or doctors responsible for approving the procedures implanting all the embryos should face a review board, if not immediate loss of license to practice.

I pity the fourteen children of this clueless self-centered woman.

Editors, Ms. Hepola, readers--

Nadya Suleman was not "implanted with embryos" resulting in the birth of octuplets. She used injectable medications to stimulate ovulation, which have a risk of hyperovulation. (Source: an obstetrician at Kaiser here in California. She did not have her fertility treatment through Kaiser, but came to Kaiser pregnant and they did the delivery.)

IVF clinics, in which people actually are implanted with embryos, would never put more than three embryos in. All the super-multiples you hear about are not from IVF, but from these medications (usually injectable but can be oral too). Same with the two sets of sextuplets from 2006.

The issue is that IVF is much more expensive than the ovulation-stimulation medications. The fertility treatment costs less up front, but obviously the costs (to the family, to society, to the health care system) can be much greater if super-multiples result.

oh yeah, wrong century, dads are useless and irrelevant.

time for the nanny state to come to the rescue and turn daddies into FIFTH CLASS CITIZENS-- after women, minorities, pets, and inanimate objects.

"To what degree are her esteem and identity based on being a mom and why has this from a young age been such a preoccupation of hers?"

her identity isn't wrapped up in being a mother. What an immature thought process you have! She was told as a teen that she would not be able to have children. My guess is the shock of learning that about herself was the impetus for the eventual obsession.

Instead of stringing her up, I vote for the stupid ass who actually planted those remaining frozen embryos. Sure, they were her property, but that fertility doctor should have forced her to take him/her to court to get them!

It just goes to show you that any idiot, mentally impaired, etc. person can become a parent in our society - sometimes 14 times in less than 7 years!