Disparity

A Ugandan woman in Gulu delivered premature sextuplets this week, after 4 months of hospitalized bed rest. And every one of them died. There was a newspaper story about her grief. She left the hospital with nothing to show for her love and effort.

Meanwhile the California octuplets make world headlines, having had 46 doctors and nurses attend their delivery, receiving state-of-the art intensive care, and all are so far alive.

The babies in both cases were similar sizes, 800 to 1000 grams. But California and Gulu are worlds apart. Regardless of who used what fertility drugs (the Ugandan woman denies, and the American might deny too) . . . the ethics of selective termination have overshadowed the more glaring ethical question of justice, of a world where one woman buries six and the other goes home with eight.