I believe Jon and Kate got about $75K per episode. Enough for that $1.1 million house.
And insurance at my work pays for fertility treatments – which may results in one or two kids and what, $15K a pop? I thought uncomplicated hospitals births are maybe $3K each?
Not remotely. But if you’re proposing drawing lines through fundamental human rights like reproduction, then those lines had better be tightly defined and motivated by something a hell of a lot more substantial than some infinitesimal fraction of your tax or insurance premium dollars. Otherwise you just look like a hypocrite for not going after the other people whose choices cost you money, or a miserly curmudgeon for thinking fractions of pennies should give you power over others.
Provoking thought in one such as yourself is undoubtedly beyond my meager abilities. I shudder to think of what I would have to do to bring you amusement. Luckily, I’m more easily amused.
Enjoy,
Steven
Wow. Did all of them survive, though? Back then, I would imagine, the infant mortality rate was much higher, so people tended to have more children.
This is crazy. I don’t see how all this is God’s will, when you have to get surgery and your baby needs a NICU after the fact. If she was doing this in another era she would have been dead after this one if not sooner. I’ve also heard she has to have her cervix sewn shut… All this medical intervention seems like it would be a good time to STOP.
Seriously, the quiver is full.
What? Medical dopers, does this ever happen, as a matter of course?
Let’s keep in mind that what we see on TV should be taken with a grain of salt. Like all “reality” shows the Duggar specials and TV series are heavily edited. We see only a very tiny fracture of the raw footage that’s been greatly manipulated. Of course TLC will make sure to edit things so as to pain the Duggars in a positive light. Otherwise they’d stop making the shows (or go to another network).
Oh yeah? Well, I heard that all those kids she has are really the product of various alien abductions over the years, THAT’S why she can have so many so relatively painlessly.
If you’re referring to the “cervix sewn shut” part, yes that can happen. If a women has cervical incompetence, they may perform cervical cerclage. They place a suture through the cervix early in the pregnancy to decrease the risk of miscarriage, and then remove the suture towards the end of the pregnancy after the greatest risk of miscarriage has passed.
ETA: I haven’t heard myself if Mrs. Duggar has ever really had this done, but it’s not implausible given her history of miscarriage. I don’t know if she has any other risk factors for cervical incompetence,
This happens frequently for people who have miscarriages due to the cervix not staying closed.
http://www.americanpregnancy.org/pregnancycomplications/cervicalcerclage.html
It can also be needed if you have many children. My great aunt (who had 21 children in 19 births) needed this for the last few.
Believe me when I say that these 19 have it much better than those 21.
Rats! Simulpost.
Yikes. The human body is a scary thing sometimes.
I hope my cervix doesn’t prove incompetent when the time comes. Really. Incompetent. So harsh!
Somebody give that woman a cork for Christmas.
Yeah. A really, really large cork! 
Or maybe just a dab of Super Glue between her knees. . .
Then I hope like HELL they get away from this mindset that “we must reproduce and outnumber the heathens” else those older sisters will be raising their younger siblings without even a mother to consult with - as she’ll either be quite dead or caught up with raising 4 more micropreemies.
I would hope that The Lord’s plan for them doesn’t include breeding her until she’s dead. Time for Jim-Bob to learn to whack off.
Pre-eclampsia? Isn’t that usually fatal? (All I remember is an episode of ER where a woman died from it)
Yeesh, my family is Catholic, and I think the biggest was my maternal grandfather’s – eleven. But the eldest, my great-aunt Mary was born in 1915.
Does anyone REALLY think that every single one of those kids is going to follow in Mom’s and Dad’s footsteps? And out of 19, one of them has to be gay.
Untreated pre-eclampsia is often fatal - these days, if you get to the doc in time, you usually survive.
Technically, it’s eclampsia that is usually fatal. Pre-eclampsia is the constellation of symptoms leading up to eclampsia. AFAIK, delivery is the only cure for either condition.
Neither sounds fun, though.
I hope at least a couple of their kids grows up to be atheist
It all depends … but if each of tham has 10 or 11 children that’s 200+ people from just that family … and the math only gets scarier if they have more.