Opposing octuplits (and other notes on Rashi's medical knowledge)

I am very much opposed to this woman with her eight babies, but not for the reasons given by our local Scrooges. They think its an outrage that a single mother was permitted to bring children into the world, and it makes them very mad that the state and federal government will be providing the children with very expensive intensive care, courtesy of you, the taxpayer, at no cost to the mother.

My objection is different.

My objection is theological.

Too many of the local believers imagine that the arrival of these eight babies is proof Rashi was right when he said (Exodus 1:7) that Israelite women bore six children at each birth.

"Just look at the world," I've heard them say, "and your faith will only be reinforced."

This is, of course, exactly backwards. The eight children born last week will not make it out of infancy without serious physical and/or development problems, and they've only survived at all because modern medicine came to their rescue. The children were monitored at every step of the pregnancy, given oxygen and various drugs at birth, and have likely been fed intravenously. If their mother had been an Israelite slave, living in the ancient world, all of them would have died.

Oh, and lets not omit to mention another salient point: These children were conceived with the aid of fertility drugs.

If anything, the case of the octuplits is proof Rashi was mistaken

Which brings me to another point:

Rashi on Exodus 2: 3 says this

[When] she could no longer hide him because the Egyptians counted her [pregnancy] from the day that he [Amram] took her back. She bore him after [only] six months and one day (Sotah 12a), for a woman who gives birth to a seven-month child may give birth after incomplete [months] (Niddah 38b, R.H. 11a). And they searched after her at the end of nine [months].

There are two things wrong here. First, a child born at "six months and one day" doesn't survive without medical intervention. Though a rare 24-weeker can survive, they are very fragile, rarely make it into adulthood without development difficulties, and never survive without drugs and oxygen. Never. Second, there's no such thing as a "seven-month" child. Human gestation is 9 months, or forty weeks - no exceptions.

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