Are you a side effect of my medication?

Today A-Rod admitted using steroids. He said that at the time he was "young, naive and stupid." He was in his mid-20's at the time. He was 32 years old when he told Catie Couric in a Dateline interview that he had never taken performance enhancing drugs because he didn't need them to play better than anyone else in MLB.
Apparently he outgrew young and naive.
Baseball and bogus both start with B. Coincidence?

We got 1/2" of rain today with more coming overnight. That's big news in these here parts because it represents half of the average amount for the month of February, the wettest month of the year.

I worked on curriculum this morning and on Gerta this afternoon. Classic Beetles had a chrome strip down the middle of the front hood, a strip that Gerta lacked. FedEx delivered it this morning and she is now properly adorned. I'm going over the body with polishing compound and then wax, and polishing all the chrome, so I worked on that, too. Just the passenger side rear quarter left to go.
This Sunday is the Copperstate VW show, the biggest gathering of classic VW's in the state. It starts at 7 a.m. so I'll drive Gerta into church and hustle right over when we're done and before it closes down at 2:00. From what I've read there will be a ton of Beetles, busses, Ghia's and Things, plus vendors. Should be interesting.

The national media and the pundits they've called in have given us their assessment of Nadya Suleman, the mother of the octuplets who already had six children. The uniform opinion is that she has serious emotional issues and shouldn't be the mother of six, never mind 14. I'm certainly not qualified to pass judgment on her mental health, but I've tried to pay close attention to the details of the situation and some are worth noting.

All of the children were conceived through in vitro fertilization at the same time using the same sperm donor. That is, approximately eight years ago she had a number of her eggs removed and fertilized at the West Coast IVF Clinic. Over the span of the next several years she had some of these fertilized eggs implanted, and gave birth to the first six children who now range from 2 to 7 years old. (The last implantation resulted in twins.) Then seven months ago she had all of the remaining fertilized eggs implanted - six total. Statistically the chances for all six of those embryos growing into viable babies was extremely slim. But as it turned out (note that I did NOT say, "as luck would have it") not only did all the embryos mature, but two of them did something very rare; the divided, thus creating the eight children.
So it should be pointed out that Suleman did not start out to have eight more children. She assumed she might have one or two more - the most likely outcome from the implantation of six fertilized eggs.
That, however, is not the most important fact, and the truth that, not surprisingly, the national media seems to be ignoring.
I'm not saying Nadya Suleman has the maturity and emotional health to be a mother to 14 children. Hey who does? But she does have something at least as important - an understanding of and respect for human life. She made the decision to have the remaining six fertilized eggs implanted because, "They're my children." Life begins at conception. David said, "In sin my mother conceived me" (Ps. 51:5). Tissue is not capable of sin in any sense; only human beings are. Those were embryos if we're going to use medical terminology but they are children, human beings if we're going to use biblical terminology.
The medical experts I've seen interviewed say Suleman should have practiced selective reduction once it was determined that more than one, or at the most two of those embryos was developing. Look up selective reduction and you'll see that it's a euphemism for selective abortion. Suleman was presented with that counsel and rightfully rejected it on moral grounds.

Suleman has said she attends a church which has been very supportive as she raises her children. I hope that's the case and that her congregation will continue, especially given the basis for her decision to carry all the embryos to term. They are children now, but they were then, too. And as children they deserve all the care, nurture and protection God's people can give them.

One more thing. Nadya Suleman represents the rarest exception in the use of in vitro fertilization by couples unable to conceive through normal means.
IVF involves harvesting multiple eggs, fertilizing them, and then storing them for later implantation. Because the chances are very good that the implanted embryos won't develop into fetuses (I'm using their terms again) they always harvest more than they think they'll need. That's why IVF clinics around the country are sitting on fertilized eggs (children) stored but no longer needed because earlier implantations were successful. Ther eventual destruction of these embryos is no less than abortion.
Christian parents unable to conceive through normal means should ask themselves some very important questions before they use IVF.