High Schooler Interviews Octomom for National History Day Essay

An Orange County high school student who wrote a paper on reproduction went straight to the source -- 14-year-old Rachel Blindell interviewed Nadya Suleman.

Blindell's paper was for the 2012 National History Day competition, whose theme was "Revolution, Reaction, Reform." The teenager said that she decided to focus on the medical revolution, which turned into the advance in reproductive technology, which, obviously, led to Suleman.

In a Q&A with the Orange County Register, Blindell said that while she felt it was obvious that Suleman's use of in vitro fertilization got "out of hand," she still felt that women should have access to the procedures as long as they have the means to support the resulting children.

"I think that single women and others with infertility problems should have every right to have children only if they can support them and take care of them properly," she said. However I do believe that...there should have been some limit set to how many children she could have so that she could take care of every single one of them properly."

Blindell's mom, Sharon Blindell, said that Suleman was "completely candid" during her conversation with Rachel.

"[Suleman] was frank about her need to make personal sacrifices in order to take care of them," she said. "Most interesting was when Rachel asked Nadya - now that three years had passed - whether she believed she had abused the technology of in vitro fertilization. Nadya admitted that she had never thought of it in those terms."

We wonder if Suleman is thinking about it more these days.