There's a comment that recently appeared on this site expressing shock about our choice to bring another child into this world when we already had six.

It came with a self-righteous tongue-lashing about our "public humiliation" and a nasty crack about how I would "get another book" out of the legal difficulties surrounding the birth of our son.

This kind of talk proves again something to me that I already knew.

The propensity for people to point fingers never fails and beggars the imagination. The greater the individual's lack of understanding of a situation seems to be in direct inverse proportion to the venom of the accusations.

The writer points out how selfish it is to give birth to a child when there are many children who need homes.

Four of my seven children were adopted at birth.

I have not the slightest qualm about having a child through surrogacy as I have not contibuted, in any way, to over-populating the earth. The choice to have our son could be seen as "selfish," but we have never have asked anyone else to support our children, never once complained about them, never wished they'd grow up and get on with their lives.

Rather the opposite. Like the father in "Cheapter By the Dozen," we have sometimes reflected on how peaceful it will be when all the children are grown.

And we've hated the idea.

We hope to raise a family of many, each of whom is an only child. And we hope that those children will be the kind of adults who'll combat the impulse of so many people to judge harshly anything they don't understand.

We had a baby through surrogacy because it was less expensive and -- at first -- seemed less complicated than adoption. Arletta was an acquaintance who offered to do this for us as an act of grace, for little more than her expenses. As for how many children we have, that is no one's business but our own -- just as it is not our business to judge other's religion beliefs, appearance, business practgices or romantic lives, unless those beliefs or practices hurt us or others. My children don't hurt you; it seems unlikely that they will. That they have been thrust into some kind of public scrutiny through a choice of ours is a terrible sorrow to us, and we have repeatedly asked others to respect our privacy. To refuse to comment on our shock over a judge's decision would have been unsupportive of a very kind and very lovely woman who gave us a great gift.

As for the indivdual who commented that "Arletta's blood" runs in our son's veins, that's another index of ignorance. Our son was conceived from a frozen embryo that WE created. He is related neither to Arletta nor to her estranged husband -- which makes her husband's decision to complicate our lives by toying with our son's legal future seem all the more capricious.

In any case, unless you're a Gotti or Bobby Brown, I think it's only the very few who would like to violate their children's privacy.

We're not among that few.

Jackie Mitchard