[ Golden Gater Online - December 4, 1997 ]
BROOD
Two weeks ago, in the middle of corn country, a scalpel carved a long gash into a bloated womb and the latest American heroes were born.
They weren't the pathetically underweight, non-breathing litter hauled out of Bobbi McCaughey's belly; rather, the limelight illuminated the mother and father of the freakish brood as triumphant victors in a war against infertility.
Gifts poured in -- a new home, a 15-seat van, appliances, scholarships and 16 years' worth of apple sauce. The president called. The media deep-throated the news of the world's only living septuplets and sickly sweet stories about miracles, God and family values inundated print and broadcast journalism. Newsweek even performed Photoshop orthodontics on Bobbi's rotted, snaggle-toothed grin for their cover photo. Everyone loves a winner, and the McCaugheys have been treated as if they won the Super Bowl single-handedly.
The story reminded me of the Stolpas, the moronic family from Castro Valley, my hometown, who drove down a closed road in an attempt to take a shortcut and got lost in the Sierras, surviving after the Stolpa patriarch dug a snow cave and buried his family therein to keep out the bitter cold.
While the Stolpas were heralded for resourcefully defeating the result of their own stupidity, the McCaugheys reign as champions of potentially deadly pigheadedness and hypocritical Christian values. Human anatomy is made for twins, at most one need only look at a woman's breasts to understand that. And more importantly, a womb cannot possibly support the equivalent of the Brady Bunch plus Alice -- seven offspring would inevitably result in a miscarriage and total loss of the children and possibly the mother as well, if nature took its course. In a case such as the McCaugheys, doctors usually advise aborting some of the fetuses to increase the chances of survival for the rest of them.
"That just wasn't an option," Kenny McCaughey, the proud father, told reporters. "We were trusting in the Lord for the outcome."
The Lord, indeed, along with hospitalization in the sixth month of pregnancy and constant doses of anti-labor drugs before the "birth," as well as intravenous feeding and respirator tubes to keep the 10-week premature babies alive after they were C-sectioned out. They also neglected the "Lord's" decision about Bobbi in the first place, opting for doses of the fertility drug Metrodin to override his hand of creation and kick-start her God-given barren womb. It was this drug, along with the McCaughey's selective use of heartland religion, that yielded the record-breaking, Guinness Book result.
Call it a miracle of nature, or God, or he-who-walks-behind-the-rows, but these children of the corn were born because science allowed it.
[ Golden Gater - December 4, 1997 ]