N-tuplets

Humanity has long been plagued with the very difficult task of bearing and birthing children. It is one of the most dangerous periods of life for both mother and child. Complications from this ordeal more often than not resulted in mortality. Today, modern medical science has drastically reduced the probability of death from such complications and has even given fertility hope to many couples who would have been doomed by their own biology never to produce viable offspring. Unfortunately, the innate drive to reproduce has caused many couples to push their own biology to the limit of medical science in trying to produce offspring. Once impregnated through a cocktail of drugs, hormones and possibly invasive procedures sometimes involving third parties as donors or hosts, couples will then decide to try to simultaneously bring multiple babies to term even as many as 7 at a time. If this is not a crime against those children and a crime against nature then I do not know what is. The children tend to be born prematurely and are at extreme risk through their entire development process. The most bizarre part is that these couples will not terminate some of the pregnancies for the good of the rest because of their religious hang-ups. I can appreciate an anti-abortionist position, but for a woman to undergo such unnatural and dangerous procedures and then claim a profound respect for the dignity of human life is well beyond my comprehension.

When technology is sufficiently advanced, one can more seriously consider a Brave New World in which children are grown by the hundreds in artificial wombs. In such a scenario, there would presumably be little danger to the child's safety or development. A person could then spawn as many genetically similar children as they had desire and means to support.

Here on early 21st Century Earth, upright, large brained humans cannot reproduce in litters. Reproductive technologies are very fresh and need not be used lightly to satisfy some perverted fantasy or primitive impulse. There are literally millions of unwanted or orphaned children around the world. Infertile parents should consider adoption. I propose that carrying greater than 3 unnaturally conceived children simultaneously to term should be criminally prosecuted or prohibitively taxed. Society might also consider removing the children from those households since clearly such parents are unfit.