What Is This? A Puppy Mill?

It's come out today that the woman who just gave birth to octuplets - as in eight sprogs - already had six kids at home, including a pair of two year old twins.

From The Guardian:

The woman, who has not been identified, received fertility treatment and was given the option of reducing the number of embryos but declined, according to her mother, Angela Suleman.
The embryos were implanted last year, and "they all happened to take," Suleman told the Los Angeles Times. "What do you suggest she should have done? She refused to have them killed. That is a very painful thing," she said.

The news that the woman would be faced with raising a family of 14 children came as medical experts continued to question the judgment of the team behind the delivery. Fertility specialists said that multiple births can endanger the mother and cause long-term health and developmental problems for the children.

Now reproductive freedom is one thing but using medical intervention to get 14-kids seems to go a tad beyond that. What kind of life are the parents going to be able to offer these kids? Do they even care? What if they decide to roll the dice again and head straight back to the fertility clinic?

Update - Oh great! CBS News is reporting that the mother, Hattie Kauffmann, is now living with her parents. The whereabouts of the father seems to be a mystery. A little over a year and a half ago, Hattie and Hubbie filed for bankruptcy and abandoned their home. Oh but it gets better.

Hattie's dad, the grandfather to the baker's dozen plus one gaggle of kids, has headed back to his native Iraq to earn money to support daughter and her kids. The grandparents' home, said to be a smallish, 2-3 bedroom bungalow, will house 14-children, eight of them infants, and three to four adults.