Cheaper by the dozen?

Last week, a woman gave birth to eight babies at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center, near Los Angeles.

"There were a lot of grinning doctors at news conferences early in the week, when they announced that the delivery had gone off without a hitch and all the babies were breathing on their own," writes columnist Meghan Daum in the Los Angeles Times.

Typical of the general reception given the story around the world, one Irish newspaper offered the headline: "Miracle Mum Gives Birth to Eight Babies."

Editorial writers generally saw the news as an opportunity for a grin and an elbow-nudge: "And you thought you had troubles changing diapers for one!" -- that kind of thing.

Babies are indeed both a miracle and a blessing. No outsider -- particularly the government -- has any place discouraging would-be parents from bringing into the world as many as they believe they have the resources to raise.

But what kind of resources are we talking about, here?

Extremely premature children are whisked to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for what can easily become months of care at a cost of thousands of dollars per day.

Delivered by Caesarean section at roughly 30 weeks gestation, the Bellflower babies ranged in birth weight from 1 pound, 8 ounces, to 3 pounds, 4 ounces. It will be months -- and millions of dollars -- before they go home.

In the developed world, premature babies represent more than half of infants who do not survive the first year of life. Those who do survive can encounter problems stemming from their premature delivery ranging from blindness to cerebral palsy and long-term developmental disabilities.

Nature does not implant a woman with eight infants. In vitro fertilization was used here. If a childless woman had no other way to become a mother, and if her husband or family could afford such discretionary medical luxuries, no problem.

But then, on Jan. 29, came news that the mother's marital status was unknown and that she had six previous children. She also appeared to live in a small house with her parents. There was no mention of a husband.

In a subsequent interview with the Los Angeles Times, the woman's mother, Angela Suleman, confirmed the embryos were implanted. A doctor implanted eight embryos and, in Mrs. Suleman's words, "They all happened to take," whereupon her daughter "refused to have them killed."

("Selective reduction" is the preferred medical euphemism for aborting some of the fetuses to improve the chances of the others. There are certainly legitimate ethical issues here, which should be discussed by all involved before the whole process is begun.)

In an era when tax-funded hospitals are going broke tending to even the routine humanitarian medical needs of waves of illegal immigrants, when giant federal welfare schemes hand the bills for so much medical care -- urgent as well as optional -- to us, the taxpayers, a few questions may be appropriate.

Are taxpayers or the ratepayers of a private insurance company paying millions of dollars for fertility treatments and the ensuing postnatal costs? Has anyone calculated the eventual costs to tax-funded general and special education imposed by unmarried women? What about those who already have multiple children? And those already raising children with taxpayer assistance?

Babies are great. But -- assuming the partial reports to date are accurate, here -- by what delegated power does any government agency require those who have decided to bear no children -- or to stop at one or two, after weighing the costs -- to finance the whims of someone who decides to bear children numbers seven through 14 without showing any evidence of a trust fund worthy of a Rockefeller?

Perhaps the young mom won the Megabucks and can easily afford to foot the bills for this elective "miracle." Perhaps a private philanthropist will step in and say "It's on me!"

We hope so. But in the meantime, questions remain.