Suleman Octuplets Could Cost Taxpayers Millions

Via the Los Angeles Times:

Nadya Suleman has 14 children, including newborn octuplets. She has no job, no income and owes $50,000 in student loans.

Still, the 33-year-old Whittier woman said she's confident that she can afford to raise her huge family, insisting she can do it without welfare. In an interview Tuesday with NBC, she said she could use student loans to make ends meet until she finishes graduate school and gets a job.

But Suleman faces what are likely to be millions of dollars in medical bills alone, and it's increasingly likely that taxpayers will foot many of those bills.

Her family is eligible for large sums of public assistance money. Even before she gave birth to the octuplets Jan. 26, Suleman was receiving $490 in monthly food stamps, and three of her children were receiving federal supplemental security income because they are disabled.

Lowell Kepke, a spokesman for the San Francisco office of the Social Security Administration, said that a single parent with no income qualifies for up to $793 a month for each child with a physical or mental condition that results in "marked or severe functional limitations." That money is used for support and maintenance of the family, and Suleman would not be required to specifically account for how it is spent.

If Suleman's disabled children received the maximum payment, she would get nearly $2,900 a month in state and federal assistance, including the food stamps.

I will never discount the miracle of life that is God's gift of the octuplets. But I'm having a really hard time seeing how the sense of responsibility of the mother and the fertility specialists just disappeared. The most important decision when thinking about bringing a child into the world is how the family will pay the costs, from prenatal care to delivery and hospital expenses, and then, of course, for the rest of a safe, secure, and healthy life. I don't believe Nadya Suleman is completely in her right mind when she suggests she'll soon be fully be able to care for these children without any outside/public support whatsoever (as she claims at the piece).

I think this is more than a deeply troubling issue at the individual psychological level. There's a social breakdown here along the way, in terms of expectations, medical guidance and advisement, and of a social welfare system that enables such extreme childbearing decisions altogether.

I pray these children have a good life. The first photos of the octuplets are here.