Posted on 02/11/2009 8:57:00 AM PST by Free ThinkerNY
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
And are less likely to manifest *ever*, if publik skool teachers are kept away from the kids.
Well, you do whether you know it or not! Babies are not to blame.
Well we do. We all do and I’d rather see a beautiful baby born than the other alternatives.
The college thing makes sense, assuming her back injury was real (and it very well may be, since various major media reports are reporting the outline of the injury incident during a psych hosptial patient riot as fact, not just as “according to Ms. Suleman”). She had gone to college and graduated, and gotten her license as a psychiatric technician (which is a genuinely skilled designation, not just a glorified bed pan cleaner thing). Most psych technician jobs would require physical ability to handle physically uncooperative patients, and a serious back injury often heals well enough to not be a problem for everyday activities, but remains subject to easy re-injury, and a psych hospital wouldn’t hire a technician with that sort of physical problem.
So if genuine physical disability has rendered someone unable to do the job that their previous education qualified them for, going back to school to get an additional degree in a related field, to get qualification for a type of work where the injury won’t be a problem, is a reasonable thing to do. Going out of one’s way to add to an existing brood of 6 children, in the middle of this job re-training process, is obviously not reasonable.
Frankly, I think the state should pay her a standard public school teacher’s salary to homeschool the whole brood. She has plenty of relevant education, she’d enjoy it, and it would cost a tiny fraction of what the bloated public school system spends on any 14 students (probably about what it normally spends on 3). I’m quite sure that her mother will cave and continue providing full time, free child care service. And her father has been saying all along that he’s going back to work in Iraq to make money to support the brood. My sense is that the three of them are about equally crazy.
“I’d rather pay for babies being born than babies being murdered.”
This isn’t the question. If we did not offer absurd benefits thes kids likely would not have even been contemplated. Not long ago if you had one kid (much less eight) you couldn’t afford they were taken away and given to people in a position to provide for them. It isn’t an either or thing, abortion has been resorted to since the dawn of time, often for reasons having nothing to do with economics. But if you SUPPORT a thing with money you will get far more of it than otherwise.
Doesn’t change the fact that babies are murdered. Plain and Simple. Therefore I repeat... I would rather pay for babies being born than murdered!!! That’s MY feel. We pay for more things that we dont’ want to pay for than we know. So...not arguing...just do not want babies murdered!!!
Oh here we go again (I’m rolling my eyes, just in case you can’t see me).
Go do a google search. Children from multiple births are more likely to have disabilities and it’s not unusual for them not to manifest themselves until later. Lets think a minute. Are you going to know if a newborn or toddler is going to have a problem learning to read, or trouble with abstract thinking?
I would prefer doctors followed their protocol in these procedures and not implant 6 or 8 at a time. One can be pro life and not think that implanting 6 or 8 babies into one womb is a good situation. I’m not sure why we are seeing pro lifers apparently applauding her actions. Additionally, she could have donated the embryos to something like Project Snowflake. Face it, she’s a nut and she WANTED a huge number of kids for whatever nutty reason. No one with an ounce of sense would think they could care, without even a husband, for 14 children all under the age of 7.
I know that the public school system will make sure to classify a large percentage of ALL children it gets its hands on as having one or more “learning disabilities” requiring the services of teachers who are paid a higher salary for having “special education” certification.
Yes, children who were born very premature often have real disabilities, but these babies’ health so far suggests they will likely have little or no trouble. Within a very few days after birth, all were breathing room air and digestingg breast milk, and as of yesterday’s update only two are still needing supplemental IV nutrition. Many preemies don’t reach this level for weeks or even months. In one of the hospital’s previous reports, about a week after the babies were born, they also reported no brain bleeds yet — these are one of the chief causes of serious physical and mental disabilities in premature infants, and the first wekk after birth is generally the highest risk period for this and other major complications.
While the mother and her fertility doctor and her enabling parents obviously made some extremely unwise decisions leading to this pregnancy, these babies are nonetheless proving to be a medical miracle, and we should all be thankful for that.
I am thankful if they are healthy, however I don’t think they’re out of the woods yet. We’ll have to wait and see.
Wow, you seem an expert on such things. How nice for you.
As for me and mine? it is NO ONE ELSE’S BUSINESS how many children some one else has. If you think she is a nut without an ounce of sense as you put it...then YOU FACE IT. I don’t have to. It’s her business and not mine.
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