California Medical Board Probes Octuplet Birth

The fertility doctor that helped deliver the fourteen babies, including the eight born last month, of a Californian woman is now facing state investigation on top of harsh criticism from medical ethicists. The medical board of California has not identified the doctor who helped Nadya Suleman become pregnant with the six boys and two girls born on January 26. It was reported shortly after the octuplets birth that Suleman has six other children.

"We're looking into the matter to see if we can substantiate if there was a violation of the standard of care," board spokeswoman Candis Cohen sai. She did not elaborate on this however.

Suleman, who is a divorced single mother, told NBC’s Today said that the same fertility specialist who provided the in vitro fertilization for all fourteen children used the donated sperm of a friend. In the interview broadcast Friday Suleman said six embryos were implanted for each of her pregnancies.

"Those are my children, and that's what was available and I used them. So, I took a risk. It's a gamble. It always is," Suleman said.

In the United States there isn’t a law that says how man embryos can be implanted in a mother’s womb. But doctors have said that the norm for woman her age is two or three embryos at the most.

"The revelation about one center treating her makes the treatment even harder to understand," said Arthur Caplan, bioethics chairman at the University of Pennsylvania. "They went ahead when she had six kids, knowing that she was a single mom ... and put embryos into her anyway."

The octuplets were born prematurely and are expected to stay in the hospital for several weeks. Her other six children range from the ages of 2 to 7. Suleman has said that she had never been on welfare and that she would find a way to get by with her family, friends and church. She plans to return to school in the fall. The birth of the octuplets has raised many questions, one including how a woman can raise fourteen kids.

"All I wanted was children. I wanted to be a mom. That's all I ever wanted in my life," Suleman said in the portion of the interview that aired Friday. "I love my children."