Nadya Suleman and the Complexities of Reproductive Choice

Nadya Suleman, the recent mother of octuplets, has been a hot topic this week.

We can't overlook the racist and classist elements of the discussion around her choice to have all her embryos implanted. When families like the Duggars, or "Jon & Kate + 8" get TV shows, sponsorships and generally positive media press, why is Suleman facing nothing but criticism?

A lot of the discussion has focussed on her financial situation. Especially given California's current financial crisis, there has been a lot of criticism of Suleman for choosing to have this many children when she is unmarried and unemployed.

It may seem obvious to say that you shouldn't have children that you can't financially support, but to follow that logic means that only people of certain classes should be allowed to have children. In these economic times, when almost anyone can slip into poverty on the whim of fate, should parents suddenly poor be forced to give up their children? If the government decides how many children a poor woman can have, where is the end to that slippery slope?

We are not that far removed from a time when Native, Black, poor, and disabled women were sterilized against their will. The last case of forced sterilization in the U.S. occurred in 1981.

What about access to procedures like IVF? If fertility treatments are limited only to the rich, is this not another way of controlling poor women's reproduction?

Ultimately, who gets to decide what a woman does with her body?

Regardless of how many children she has, or her financial situation, or race, or ability, that answer should always be, "The woman, in consultation with her doctor."

Reproductive freedom has always been about more than the right to choose abortion. It is about opposition to forced sterilization, comprehensive sex ed, allowing women to space their pregnancies, or choose to be child-free, or to be single parents, or to use fertility treatments. It is about supporting a woman's right to determine her own reproductive future, regardless of what her choice(s) may be.