In a more Western country, the family would get sponsorships to help them through financially. But again, this could prompt more massively multiple pregnancies as others try to jump on that bandwagon (or as one more deterrent to multiple pregnancy is removed).
My new GP is Egyptian. I haven't checked her certificates (as to where she got her first degree) but she's got what it takes to practice medicine in Australia. In fact, she is brilliant. And cautious.
If the Egyptian doctors, under those conditions, have managed to get the babies to such a good birth weight without damaging the mother's health and also without complications with the babies, then they have certainly demonstrated their capability. As for what they have done in administering fertility treatment - the dosages are undoubtedly designed for patients with fertility problems because in most cases, that is why they would be administered. The doctors may not have had any guidelines as to reducing the dose in a case like this, when social pressure is the reason for requesting fertility treatment.
Unless you live in a society that thinks this way, yo cannot fully comprehend what is it like. I have memories of growing up in a very patriarchal time (perhaps not as patriarchal as this). People asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up - I told tham I wanted to be "a scientist's helper" because I knew, even as a very small child, that as a girl I would NEVER be permitted to be the scientist in charge. I think at some point I must have said I wanted to be a scientist, and someone told me I couldn't because I was a girl. AND I ACCEPTED THIS.
I remember watching an episode of "Dr Kildare" where doctors were debating the ethics of telling a patient tat they were going to die. Or the decision doctors had to make, when having to choose from fifteen kidney failure patients, which five would be permitted to have dialysis. Or the episode where a young girl had to have surgery for a brain tumour, but to get the tumour they also had to take the girl's visual cortex and she woke up blind. They knew these risks before the surgery, but to tell her first would have been too cruel, it was reasoned.
I remember reading a "Reader's Digest" article about Rex Harrison's wife, Kay Kendall, who had leukemia. Rex told doctors to not tell her, because she was such a vital person, full of life, he wanted her to be happy. So the fiction was maintained. The article did hint at the possibility that towards the end Kay knew, but hid her knowledge from Rex because she wanted him to believe he had been successful in 'protecting' her. These 'lies' would all have been told for lofty reasons, but the end result becomes an inability to let people fully deal with and share a situation that can be an intolerable burden. If only Rex Harrison could have heard Kay say, "I accept my death - it's OK to let me go," it might have saved them both a lot of pain and anxiety.
I do feel for this poor woman in Egypt - she has had these babies, hasn't yet been able to meet some of them (this happens in our society too, in similar cases) but she hasn't been fully respected in any of this. Her husband named the babies without her, for example. Chances are, he was both under pressure from media and relatives, and just not thinking. But it is indicative of perhaps the lack of informed consultation that the woman especially may have had.
But this could be more common than you think - the woman is only the vessel, after all. Would you tell a jug whether it will be filled with milk, or wine? That is how a lot of the world thinks. They still value that jug and look after it but at the end of the day it is still only a jug.
In the Western world we live with marriage for love, with marriage as a partnership, with informed consent, with all our basic needs provided for (mostly) by a combination of government and welfare agencies, with the commercial drive to find other ways to "make a buck". We live under circumstances where our countries produce more calories per day than we could ever eat. Those calories are all within easy reach.
But it's scary - for the majority of the world, life is not like this.
I worry for this family - how can they survive? Will they feel pressured to 'sell' a child or more?
But however they manage, IF they manage - too much success could prompt more to follow the same dream. For a guaranteed son.
I was just talking about this with difficult child 1. He is incensed by anything like this, where people are not given equal respect.
Another thread was discussing (without any political value judgements) how far we have come when the US can have a black man allowed to run for President, and a few people have discussed the scope of changes we've seen for the better.
Yes, we have come a long way. But we're not there yet.
Marg