Imagine this, if you can. The year is 2001. A single, 26 year old wants a child but isn’t involved in a relationship, so she gets in vitro fertilization. She has the kid she wanted.

This isn’t so bad ‘- babies are cute. She could take care of it, and everyone wants to have a child of their own at some point.

But then she wants another one, and does the same thing. Again, not so bad, having a boyfriend do it would be more fun, but OK.

And then another, and another, and so on, until she has six children.

It entered into weird territory a couple kids ago.

Then, as if being a single mom with six children wasn’t enough, she decides to have a doctor shoot the ultimate egg concoction straight into her uterus, hoping for six more. Fortunately, two eggs split, so she had octuplets.

She is the Octomom, or, as her birth certificate says, Nadya Suleman.

In case you were wondering, no, she is not a millionaire who can afford to pay for a nanny, the diapers and the food. She can’t, in fact, pay for them at all, as the woman’s mother made clear when she said that Octomom wasn’t even contributing to the food bill. Her 67-year-old father, Edward Suleman, is going back to Iraq as a translator in order to help take care of the children, because Octomom cannot.

He’s a nice guy.

Because of her negligent behavior, she has been given taxpayer dollars to help care for the kids, which she should. There is no reason why children should suffer because their mom suffers from some sort of problem as well.

So, when you thought that things couldn’t get any weirder in the Octomom saga, it did.

The Octomom turned down an offer which would give free health and dental insurance for all her children. Oh, and one million dollars as well. The catch?

Appear in some porn movies.

I mean, half the gynecologists in the country have seen it already, so why not?

‘Those guys at Vivid video must be nuts! Who wants to see me naked?’ she said about the offer.

She is right that no one wants to see her naked. She is wrong though, when she says they must be nuts. She obviously knows nothing about the porn industry. No one wants to see her naked, but there’s a reason why everyone slows down when they see a multicar pileup on the highway. Convert that analogy to her potential movies, and you will understand.

According to FOX News, the guys at Vivid want her to have sex with eight different men in eight different scenes. I sent in a suggestion saying they should prosthetically attach four more arms onto her so she would be a real Octomom, but they haven’t responded yet.

Stephen Hirsch, the CEO of Vivid Entertainment, said he ‘would really love to sit down and talk with her and come up with something she feels comfortable with ‘hellip; she’s struggling financially and this is a woman who wants to provide for her kids. This way, she can hold her head high and not be using taxpayer’s money to support her family.’

Why the hell not?

Noam Chomsky, the famous linguist and porn hater, says pornography is a ‘humiliation and degradation of women.’ He is correct in believing that it lends to the objectification of women and more. But it’s unfortunate that people don’t see how Nadya Suleman’s actions lead to the degradation of women as well.

Coming full swing from the right to not bear a child, Nadya is the epitome of what the choice to do whatever you want to your body really entails.

She is taking the sacred ability of creating and nurturing life and turning it into a sham. Females have been graced with the wondrous and unmatched ability to produce life. It used to be that both males and females had to be involved, but Octomom showed us six times you can do it by yourself with a present from the sperm bank.

Thanks, science.

Suleman makes it clear that allowing women to choose to do whatever they want to their bodies isn’t a source of empowerment or something worthy of respect. There is nothing admirable in abusing women’s envious ability to give birth by taking it to excess. Nor is there anything respectable in castin
g out the role of the familial mother by getting rid of potential life because it’s inconvenient.‘

Throwing away and making a farce of the one thing that sets you above the other sex is purely self-debasement.

But as it goes, on the individual level, it will always remain, ‘it doesn’t affect anyone but me.’ But on the whole, it’s a different story. And it’s a story where the unfortunate ending results in the continual objectification and degradation of women.

Ben Moriarty is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].