The arrival of the McCaughey septuplets in Iowa last week looked like the ultimate good-news story, and the TV reporters covered it that way at first. But celebrating the birth of lots of apparently healthy children, against enormous odds, to happy and relieved parents is apparently de trop in America's newsrooms. It sure didn't take long for the fecundity backlash to set in.
"I think this is an unfortunate event," said Maria Bustillo, a reproductive endocrinologist, on CNN. "I'm glad they're doing well, but I think that in general, we would look at this, those of us who do this for a living, as kind of failure of our technology."
Bobbi and Kenny McCaughey certainly don't consider themselves unfortunate, but what do they know? By the canons of modern medical expertise, they are grossly irresponsible: After the fertility drugs succeeded beyond expectation, you see, they should have pre-emptively killed several of their unborn babies. This form of abortion involves the injection of poison into one or more of the siblings. As Nancy Snyderman, ABC medical correspondent, explained it on Good Morning America: "Now, I know it's an unsavory thought for a lot of people, but selective abortion, where you literally think about not which fetuses to get rid of but how many to get rid of, is something that we really need to talk about openly in cases like this."
The McCaugheys, who oppose abortion, said "No thank you" and took their chances. Sam Donaldson, perhaps taking his cue from Snyderman, weighed in disapprovingly on This Week: The McCaugheys were playing "Russian roulette" with the health of their children, saying, as it were, "I don't care. I'll put the bullet in this chamber and it won't come up." Fortunately, Cokie Roberts jumped in and silenced Donaldson before he could injure any bystanders with his metaphor, pointing out that "this is a eugenics argument."
The New York Times, for its part, marked the happy occasion with an op- ed from Gene Jones, the director of the Des Moines Coalition for the Homeless, who wrote that the outpouring of gifts to the McCaughey family is an example of the "warped character of American compassion and obligation." Shame on Iowa governor Terry Branstad, Jones argued, for pulling together private support to build the McCaugheys a new house. Meanwhile, there are "at least 9, 000 homeless children in Iowa" and "6,000 to 8,000 children have been disqualified from welfare." The connection? In our heartless country, " Private compassion is good; public compassion and responsibility are bad."
So much for good news.