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Abstract
This article interrogates public discourse surrounding the Suleman octuplet birth, tracing related rhetorics of pathology and risk that marked Nadya Suleman as a threat to be contained while masking dominant logics of race, class, and family formation through the ethos of medical expertise. This study demonstrates how the rhetoric of risk functions as a powerful mode of governance, policing the borders of maternity and asserting the primacy of medical authority in maintaining these borders.
Notes
[1] John Bowe, “The Octomom and Her Babies Prepare for Prime Time,” New York Times, November 15, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/magazine/15octomom-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
[2] For example Celebitchy, “Octomom on Oprah: I Made 100K for Star Bikini Photos,” April 20, 2010, http://www.celebitchy.com/98525/octomom_on_oprah_i_made_100k_for_star_bikini_photos/.
[3] Quoted in John Bowe, “The Octomom and Her Babies Prepare for Prime Time.”
[4] Bonnie J. Dow, “Criticism and Authority in the Artistic Mode,” Western Journal of Communication 65, no. 3 (2001): 345.
[5] Dow, “Criticism and Authority in the Artistic Mode,” 345–46; Jasinski as quoted in Dow, “Criticism and Authority in the Artistic Mode.”
[6] I searched US newspapers in LexisNexis using “Nadya Suleman” and “octuplets” between January 1, 2009 and July 1, 2011. I tracked coverage in mainstream periodicals such as Time and People, reviewed transcripts from news broadcasts and talk shows, including Oprah, The View, and Dr. Phil, and studied online forums for each show.
[7] At the time, ASRM guidelines recommended two embryos for a woman of Suleman's age “in the absence of extraordinary circumstances.” Stephanie N. Sivinski, “Putting Too Many (Fertilized) Eggs in One Basket: Methods of Reducing Multifetal Pregnancies in the United States,” Texas Law Review 88, no. 4 (2010): 897.
[8] ASRM guidelines state that they “are not intended to be a protocol to be applied in all situations, and cannot substitute for the individual judgment of the treating physicians based on their knowledge of their patients and specific circumstances.” American Society for Reproductive Medicine, “Practice Committee Documents,” https://www.asrm.org/Guidelines_for_Practice/.
[9] Judith Daar, “Federalizing Embryo Transfers: Taming the Wild West of Reproductive Medicine?,” Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 23, no. 2 (2012); Camille M. Davidson, “Octomom and Multi-Fetal Pregnancies: Why Federal Legislation Should Require Insurers to Cover In Vitro Fertilization,” William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law 17 (2011); Deborah L. Forman, “When ‘Bad’ Mothers Make Worse Law: A Critique of Legislative Limits on Embryo Transfer,” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Social Change 14 (2010); Michele Goodwin, “A Few Thoughts on Assisted Reproductive Technology,” Law and Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice 27 (2009); Kimberly D. Krawiec, “Why We Should Ignore the ‘Octomom’,” Northwestern University Law Review 104 (2009); Radhika Rao, “How (Not) to Regulate ARTs: Lessons from Octomom,” Albany Law Journal of Science and Technology 21, no. 2 (2011); Sivinski, “Putting Too Many (Fertilized) Eggs.”
[10] Davidson, “Octomom and Multi-Fetal Pregnancies,” 139.
[11] Rao, “How (Not) to Regulate ARTs,” 316.
[12] Forman, “When ‘Bad’ Mothers Make Worse Law,” 303.
[13] Dana-Ain Davis, “The Politics of Reproduction: The Troubling Case of Nadya Suleman and Assisted Reproductive Technology,” Tranforming Anthropology 17, no. 2 (2009).
[14] Suleman, interview by Ann Curry, “Her Side of the Story,” NBC Dateline News, February 10, 2009.
[15] Suleman, interview by Ann Curry, “Her Side of the Story,” NBC Dateline News, February 10, 2009.
[16] Suleman, interview by Phil McGraw, “Octuplets' Mom Talks with Dr. Phil,” Dr. Phil, February 2009.
[17] Suleman, quoted in “‘Octuplets’ Mom: ‘All I Ever Wanted’,” CNN.com, February 6, 2009, http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/06/octuplets.mom/index.html?iref=24hours.
[18] Margaret Marsh and Wanda Ronner, The Empty Cradle: Infertility in America from Colonial Times to the Present (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
[19] Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women, 15th Anniversary ed. (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006); Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997).
[20] UN Millennium Project 2005, “Taking Action: Achieving Gender Equality and Empowering Women,” Task Force on Education and Gender Equality, http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/Gender-complete.pdf.
[21] The National Institutes of Health recognizes infertility as a health care disparity that remains under-examined as such; Lorraine Culley, Nicky Hudson, and Floor van Rooij, eds., Marginalized Reproduction: Ethnicity, Infertility, and Reproductive Technologies (London: Earthscan, 2009).
[22] Cited in Roberts, Killing the Black Body. More recently, Jonathan V. Last's work exhibits a similar logic. See What to Expect When No One's Expecting: America's Coming Demographic Disaster (New York: Encounter Books, 2013).
[23] National Center for Health Statistics, “National Survey of Family Growth,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg.
[24] Jeff Gottlieb and Sam Quinones, “The Eighth Baby Was a Surprise,” Los Angeles Times, January 27, 2009.
[25] “California Woman Gives Birth to Rare Octuplets,” CBS News/AP, January 26, 2009; Raquel Maria Dillon, “Octuplets Born in California Doing ‘Very Well,’” The Associated Press, January 27, 2009.
[26] Michael Inbar, “First U.S. Octuplets Offer Advice to New Parents of Eight,” The Today Show, MSNBC, January 28, 2009, http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/28891400/ (emphasis mine).
[27] Jill Smolowe et al., “A Mom's Controversial Choice,” People, February 16, 2009, 79.
[28] Bonnie Rochman, “The Ethics of Octuplets” Time, February 5, 2009.
[29] Kay Hymowitz, “Where in the World Is Octodad?,” The Wall Street Journal, February 20, 2009.
[30] Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (New York: Routledge, 2005).
[31] Rickie Solinger, Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001).
[32] Ginia Bellafante, “In Documentary, an Obsessed ‘Octomom,’” New York Times, August 20, 2009; Katherine Thomson, “Does Nadya Suleman Think She's Angelina Jolie?” HuffPost Entertainment, February 10, 2009.
[33] Alison Stateman, “The Octuplets Mom Speaks, and the Questions Grow,” Time, February 7, 2009.
[34] Bellefante, “In Documentary, an Obsessed Octomom”; Chez Pazienza, “Nadya Suleman, the Duggars, and the Glorification of Family Freakshows,” HuffPost, February 11, 2009.
[35] Dr. Jeff Gardere quoted in Suleman, interview by Ann Curry, “Her Side.”
[36] Davis, “The Politics of Reproduction.”
[37] Jane Velez-Mitchell, Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell, CNN, November 24, 2009.
[38] Suz Orman, interview by Oprah Winfrey, The Oprah Winfrey Show: Suze Orman's Intervention with “Octomom” Nadya Suleman, January 11, 2011; Nadya Suleman, interview by Oprah Winfrey, The Oprah Winfrey Show: Octuplets' Mom, a Conversation with Nadya Suleman, April 20, 2010; Nadya Suleman, interview by Phil McGraw.
[39] Velez-Mitchell, Issues.
[40] David Finnigan, “First Peek at Octo-cuties—Report Reveals Serial Mom Was Already on Food Stamps,” The New York Post, February 10, 2009.
[41] Natalie Cisneros, ““Alien” Sexuality: Race, Maternity, and Citizenship,” Hypatia 28, no. 2 (2013): 7.
[42] “Octomom vs illegal aliens,” Topix, posted in the Immigration Reform Forum, February 16, 2009, http://www.topix.com.
[43] Whoopi Goldberg, quoted in Liz Brown, “Octomom Nadya Suleman's ‘The View’ Appearance Evokes Criticism, Anger,” The View Examiner, February 25, 2009.
[44] Tina Moore, “Octuplet Grandma's Shame: Daughter Has 14 Kids, No Husband,” New York Daily News, January 31, 2009.
[45] Russell quoted in Velez-Mitchell, Issues.
[46] For example, Ulrich Beck, World at Risk, trans. Ciaran Cronin (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2009); Tasha Dubriwny, The Vulnerable Empowered Woman: Feminism, Postfeminism and Women's Health (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2013); Anthony Giddens, Runaway World: How Globalization Is Reshaping Our Lives (New York: Routledge, 2003); Lisa Keranen, “Concocting Viral Apocalypse: Catastrophic Risk and the Production Bio(in)Security,” Western Journal of Communication 75, no. 5 (2001): 451–72; Carolyn Miller, “The Presumptions of Expertise: The Role of Ethos in Risk Analysis,” Configurations 11 (2004): 163–202; Nikolas S. Rose, The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); J. Blake Scott, Risky Rhetoric: AIDS and the Cultural Practices of HIV Testing (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003); Brian C. Taylor, “‘A Hedge against the Future’,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 96, no. 1 (2010): 1–24; Davi Johnson Thornton, “Race, Risk, and Pathology in Psychiatric Culture: Disease Awareness Campaigns as Governmental Rhetoric,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 27, no. 4 (2010): 311–35; Joan Wolf, Is Breast Best?: Taking on the Breastfeeding Experts and the New High Stakes of Motherhood (New York: New York University Press, 2011).
[47] Dubriwny, The Vulnerable Empowered Woman; Rose, The Politics of Life Itself; Thornton, “Race, Risk, and Pathology.”
[48] Wolf, Is Breast Best?, xvi.
[49] Robert Danisch, “Political Rhetoric in a World Risk Society,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 40, no. 2 (2010): 172–92; Dubriwny, The Vulnerable Empowered Woman; Rachel C. Hall, “‘It Can Happen to You’: Rape Prevention in the Age of Risk Management,” Hypatia 19, no. 3 (2004): 1–19; Keranen, “Concocting Viral Apocalypse”; Miller, “The Presumptions of Expertise”; Scott, Risky Rhetoric; Vesta T. Silva, “Lost Choices and Eugenic Dreams,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 8, no. 1 (2011); Taylor, “A Hedge against the Future”; Thornton, “Race, Risk, and Pathology”; Wolf, Is Breast Best?.
[50] Dubriwny, The Vulnerable Empowered Woman, 27.
[51] Jeffrey A. Bennett, Banning Queer Blood: Rhetorics of Citizenship, Contagion, and Resistance (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009); Miller, “The Presumptions of Expertise.”
[52] Miller, “The Presumptions of Expertise,” 185.
[53] Smolowe et al., “A Mom's Controversial Choice,” 80.
[54] Stephanie Saul, “Birth of Octuplets Puts Focus on Fertility Clinics,” New York Times, February 11, 2009.
[55] Ashley Surdin, “Octuplet Mother Also Gives Birth to Ethical Debate,” Washington Post, February 4, 2009.
[56] Dr. Robert Stillman, quoted in Susan Donaldson James, “Octomom Lesson: More Couples Pressure Doctors,” ABC News, October 25, 2010.
[57] Karen Grigsby Bates, “Octuplets Make 14 for Mom, Stirring Debate,” All Things Considered, National Public Radio, January 30, 2009.
[58] Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, “Fetal Images: The Power of Visual Culture in the Politics of Reproduction,” Feminist Studies 13, no. 2 (1987); Silja Samerski, “Genetic Counseling and the Fiction of Choice: Taught Self-Determination as a New Technique of Social Engineering,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 34, no. 4 (Summer 2009).
[59] Samerski, “Genetic Counseling,” 744.
[60] James, “Octomom Lesson,” 24.
[61] Alison Motluk, “When Eight Is Seven Too Many,” New Scientist 201, no. 2695 (2009).
[62] Wolf, Is Breast Best?, xv.
[63] “Fertility Ethics,” Los Angeles Times, February 3, 2009.
[64] “Mothers Gone Wild,” MacLean's, February 23, 2009.
[65] Quoted in Stateman, “Octuplets Mom Speaks.”
[66] Caplan, “Ethics and Octuplets,” Philly.com, February 6, 2009, http://articles.philly.com/2009-02-06/news/25282602_1_fertility-treatment-renowned-fertility-specialist-nadya-suleman.
[67] Quoted in James, “Octomom Lesson.”
[68] Rita Rubin, “A Singular Approach to IVF,” USA Today, March 4, 2009.
[69] Kay Hymowitz, “Where in the World is Octodad?” The Wall Street Journal, February 20, 2009.
[70] Scott, Risky Rhetoric, 87.
[71] Rose, The Politics of Life Itself, 3.
[72] Rose, The Politics of Life Itself, 143.
[73] Rose, The Politics of Life Itself, 3. See also Dubriwny, The Vulnerable Empowered Woman; Thornton, “Race, Risk, and Pathology”; Wolf, Is Breast Best?.
[74] Grifo, quoted in James, “Octomom Lesson.”
[75] Current regulations refuse issues of ethics or access. Other countries have adopted enforceable protocols that determine when parents might select/avoid genetic characteristics (e.g. gender, birth defects, disabilities, or donor tissue matches), or in the affirmation (or refusal) of marginalized patients, like single women or LGBTQ families; Connie Cho, “Regulating Assisted Reproductive Technology,” Yale Journal of Medicine and Law VII, no. 1 (2010): 40–41.
[76] Dubriwny, The Vulnerable Empowered Woman.
[77] Lynn Paltrow and Jeanne Flavin, “Arrests of and Forced Interventions on Pregnant Women in the United States (1973–2005): The Implications for Women's Legal Status and Public Health,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 38, no. 2 (2013): 299–343.
[78] Raina Kelley, “Octomom Hypocrisy,” Newsweek, March 3, 2009; Susan Stewart, “Big Brood Spawns Big Ratings,” New York Times, February 15, 2009.
[79] “Arkansas Woman Has 15th Child,” NBC News, May 25, 2004.
[80] For example, Roberts, Killing the Black Body; Solinger, Pregnancy and Power.
[81] Dubriwny, The Vulnerable Empowered Woman, 66.
[82] Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, “A New Vision for Advancing our Movement for Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, and Reproductive Justice,” Oakland, CA: ACRJ, http://strongfamiliesmovement.org/assets/docs/ACRJ-A-New-Vision.pdf; Loretta J. Ross, “The Movement for Reproductive Justice: Six Years Old and Growing,” Collective Voices 4, no. 10 (2009): 8–9.
[83] “Insurance Coverage in Your State,” RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, 2013, http://www.resolve.org/family-building-options/insurance_coverage/state-coverage.html.
[84] Daar, “Federalizing Embryo Transfers.”
[85] Sara Hayden, “Revitalizing the Debate between <Life> and <Choice>: The 2004 March for Women's Lives,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 6, no. 2 (2009); Ross, “The Movement.”