In China, a photography studio recently posted an advertisement online displaying examples of baby photos it had taken. The problem was that the photos showed a family of eight kids, four boys and four girls, belonging to parents who had apparently paid $160,000 to have the kids delivered by surrogate mothers. However, it's illegal for Chinese hospitals to provide surrogacy procedures. Not to mention China's one-child policy. Which makes the public display of the photos a pretty brazen flouting of the law. But are the photos real, or just a publicity stunt? The AP reports:
Chinese media are calling the mother “babaotai muqin,” or “octomom,” a reference to the American woman who gave birth to octuplets using in vitro fertilization.
Much remains uncertain about the family from Guangzhou, the capital of south China’s Guangdong province. According to the Guangzhou Daily, a government newspaper, the biological mother carried two of the babies, while two surrogates gave birth to three each. After the babies were born in September and October last year, 11 nannies were hired to help take care of the children, the report said.
While some suspect a hoax, a media officer with the Guangdong Health Department said the case was real and under investigation. He declined to identify the couple, citing privacy concerns.
Links:
Salon.com,
BBC News.
Comments
What interests me is the concept of 'competition' which China has certainly exhibited over and over again on various platforms. When reading stories of extreme multiple births happening in other countries (primarily the United States), a competitive group does not concern themselves with the problems involved (octo mom was a single individual giving birth simultaneously to a litter, not just a set of twins or triplets), but rather desire to step into an arena that is even more extreme: impregnating an entire 'village' with multiple embryos from a single couple.
I equate this concept more with 'Village of the Damned' than I do with anything else.