Recently (January, 2009) a California mother of six gave birth to octuplets.  After the initial sense of astonishment that a woman could actually successfully deliver eight healthy infants, many in the medical community began to raise questions about the medical ethics of sanctioning such a pregnancy.  Most responsible fertility specialists refrain from implanting more that two or three embryos at any one time.

We at Community Connections must often struggle with our own version of this ethical dilemma. We certainly respect the rights of women to make their own reproductive choices, in fact we see ourselves as champions of women's reproductive rights.  Yet we also see the tragic consequences that result when young women with few financial, emotional and familial resources "decide" to  have, as in the case of the California woman, their fourteenth child. 

Should it be our role (we are after all, social workers and psychologists and case managers, not ministers or family members) to help counsel and perhaps thus balance a woman's reproductive rights with her parental responsibility to do more than just give birth, but to raise and care for the children she brings into this world?