MSNBC's "Body Odd" takes on the issue today, consulting a number of OBGYNs.

"The uterus is a remarkably flexible organ," says Dr. Florence P. Haseltine, ob/gyn and founder of the Society for Women's Health Research in Alexandria, Va. "It can grow rather rapidly and it can recede rather rapidly. It's able to reconstruct itself and reconfigure itself quickly...I don't believe a uterus gets tired. If it had damage as a result of a specific pregnancy, it might cause trouble. But it doesn't make any physiological sense why one should worry about the uterus."

And of course, health, fitness and the state of the uterus vary from one woman's genetics to another's. While it's physically possible, there are naturally risks. The piece states that post-partum depression is more likely "after delivering five or six children" - let alone 19. Says another doctor,

There's a continuous leeching of calcium and iron, the supplemental building blocks that babies need...After having many children, chronic anemia or osteopenia – weak bones – could be a chronic risk. Also carrying children does increase the risk of incontinence, but even women who haven't had children have incontinence.

Sexy! You can be incontinent either way - luck of the genetic draw - but multiple pregnancies may help! And anyone who's looked at a photo of a grim-faced great-great grandma surrounded by her brood knows that having dozens of kids wasn't exactly rejuvenating. Yes, there are health benefits to multiple pregnancies - research suggests that it prevents both ovarian and breast cancers. But, not to put too fine a point on it, in the old days would most of these mothers have survived to the age of cancer? Maybe a few generations ago, women did have kids in Quiverfull numbers. But they started young, and, frankly, the babies didn't all survive. What's more, without modern technology, just going by the odds almost no woman's body could survive that many pregnancies: after all, Michelle Duggar has delivered three of her babies via C-section.

And it's not just the physical delivery and pregnancy: caring for that many children would tax the emotions and energy of almost any woman. Are we made for that kind of anxiety - mentally? And attitudes towards child-rearing have changed a lot: modern parenting generally proscribes a lot more attention per child - and a lot less child labor. So, can we do it? Yup. But the body can do a lot of things - if it has to. Not everyone wants to test its limits.

Are Some Women Superbreeders? [MSNBC]

• Jude Law got someone pregnant, but not Rachel McAdams' sister Kayleen — her rep (she's a makeup artist) says "She has never even met him." [Star]
• So. The mother of Jude Law's unborn spawn is:

Samantha Burke. She's an actress/model. Naturally. [TMZ]

• A source says that Samantha Burke wants Jude's cash! She expects "a large maintenance payment and financial costs, including a percentage of Jude's future earnings, agreed in writing." [The Sun]
• According to this report, Samantha Burke is from a wealthy family. Also, she looks good in a retro swimsuit. [Daily Mail]
• "Even Seth Rogen Now Hating on Katherine Heigl." He's talking shit about how she talks shit. And dissed The Ugly Truth: "That [movie] looks like it really puts women on a pedestal in a beautiful way." Plus: "I gotta say, it's not like we're the only people she said some batshit crazy things about. That's kind of her bag now." [NY Mag, LA Times]
• Carrie Prejean is planning to sue the Miss California USA organization for slander, libel, public disclosure of private facts, religious discrimination, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent infliction of emotional distress. This should be a big old mess. [Perez]
• Need beach reading? Three celebs have "written" new memoirs: Slumdog Millionaire's Rubina Ali; former Playmate Kendra Wilkinson and Good Charlotte's Joel Madden. [NY Daily News]
• Haterade Headline of the Day: "Tony Romo and Nick Lachey rebound with Jessica Simpson look-a-likes while she's left smooching a dog." [NY Daily News]
• Police chiefs suspected of "snooping" at Sarah Jessica Parker's surrogate's home have been arrested. [NY Post]
• Emma Watson is related to a 16th century witch! Her distant relative Joan Playle was excommunicated from the Church of England for witchcraft in 1592. [E!]
• Eminem's new track, "Warning," is an answer to Mariah Carey's song, "Obsessed." He raps: "You probably think since it's been so long if I had something on you I woulda did it by now, on the contrary, Mary Poppins, I'm mixing our studio session down and sending it to mastering to make it loud, enough dirt on you to murder you, this is what the fuck I do... Mariah, it ever occur to you that I still have pictures?" [Yahoo News via E!]
• Amy Winehouse's wedding album: Found in trash. Seems Blaaaaake threw his copy away. [The Sun]
• Nora Ephron says she hopes Julie & Julia will remind everyone that before EVOO, there was BUTTER, which has now been demonized. "I just do not get that at all," Ephron says, since Julia Child and her husband lived into their 90s. "And they drank like fish," she says. "I don't believe that anything has to do with what you eat, if you don't overeat. All these people who think they can cut down on their cholesterol by eating those awful egg-white omelets. There's something I really hate. It is simply not going to make any difference if you have a couple egg yolks in your omelet." [USA Today]
• Will Katie Holmes be in the Sex And The City 2: Electric Boogaloo? A source says: "The character they want her to play is a really ballsy, high-powered company executive who tangles with Samantha." Sometimes you sort of forget she's an actress, for Xenu's sake. [The Sun]
• Jeepin' jeewillickers! Even though Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar named each of their 18 children a name beginning with the letter J, their first grandchild (from son Josh) will be named Mackenzie. Whether Josh and his wife will have 18 kids with M names remains to be seen. [Star]
• So much sadness: This report claims that Michael Jackson may have had collapsed veins and needle marks all over his body — plus — he may have been dead as early as 8:30 a.m. — four hours before paramedics were called. [ET]
• Warrants filed yesterday allege that Michael Jackson was an addict. It's a violation if Dr. Conrad Murray was "prescribing to an addict." [Yahoo News via AP]
• The Michael Jackson autopsy report: Delayed. [TMZ]
• How will TLC balance Jon & Kate's popularity with the family's right for privacy? Network exec Eileen O'Neill says: "It's a sensitive situation and we navigate that as we go along… It's the family's decision to be involved in the show… We want to stay with them as long as they want to stay with us." [Variety]
• What you'll see when Jon & Kate Plus 8 returns: "Jon and Kate have never said they were perfect," Eileen O'Neill says. "You're still going to see two parents that love their kids, but you'll see them parenting separately." [People]
• This columnist asserts that the return of Jon & Kate will help Kate's image. [MSNBC Scoop]
• And, because no one is sick of these people: Jon Gosselin (and Michael Lohan??) brainstormed a new show: Divorced Dads Club. [Page Six]
• Leonardo DiCaprio's ex, Bar Refaeli, has a new man: multi-millionaire Teddy Sagi, who is among Israel's top 30 richest men. [NY Daily News]
• BREAKING: Katy Perry and Rihanna have become inseparable. [Page Six]
• Mario Lopez says the Saved By The Bell reunion was a long time coming: "Everybody knew the 20-year anniversary was coming up. This People story has been in the works for over a year, long before [late night host] Jimmy Fallon started talking about it. We were all excited about it." But what's next? "Everybody is fired up. People keep coming up to me saying 'When are you guys going to do a show?'" [People]
• Mark Paul Gosselaar says of Dustin "Screech" Diamond: That's a disaster on so many levels… I don't know where his head is. I know probably as much as you know from watching things on TV." Plus, Gosselaar says that when he played Zack on Fallon last month, there was a reason he looked young: "I read a blog [where] some guy said, 'Dude, lay off the Botox.' I've never had Botox before. The wig was so fucking tight, it gave me a mini face-lift." [Newsweek]
• Penelope Cruz looked amazing at the premiere of Broken Embraces, but the airline had lost her luggage. [People]
• Penny Cruz: "I love London... but I have difficulties with the rainy weather." [Telegraph]
• Lost spoilers! CHARLIE. [E!]
• Details of the sort-of Seinfeld reunion on Curb Your Enthusiasm, at the link. [LA Times]
• Lawyers are getting involved in that Twilight recasting drama involving Rachelle Lefevre. [E!]
• Viva la revolucion? Benicio del Toro, Bill Murray, Robert Duvall and James Caan were in Cuba yesterday. [Reuters]
• Paul Giamatti calls some scenes from his new film, Cold Souls, "sort of awkward and painful." [WSJ]
• Billy Crudup will join the cast of Eat, Pray, Love the movie, which also stars Julia Roberts, Javier Bardem and Richard Jenkins. [Variety]
• "Bandslam's account of a teenager's awkward attempts to settle into a new school remind former Friends star Lisa Kudrow of her own adolescence." [Telegraph]
• "Singer Peter Andre has accepted "substantial" damages over a newspaper claim he was unfaithful to his estranged wife, model Katie Price." [BBC News]
• "I really felt this film, which had a love affair with boeuf bourguignon, should come out in winter." — Meryl Streep on Julie & Julia. [USA Today]
• "I heard what he had to say and I knew at this moment my life would never be the same. Life no longer seemed like a series of Random events. I also began to see that being Rich and Famous wasn't going to bring me lasting fulfillment and that it was not the end of the journey." — Madonna, on first hearing about Kabbalah when pregnant with Lourdes. [AP]
• "Phoebe was so spiritual and 'out there' — and I wasn't at all. Not. At. All. If anyone was it was Jennifer [Aniston]. She introduced me to certain books that gave me an insight into that world – Phoebe's supposed world – which was a more spiritual realm." — Lisa Kudrow. [Daily Express]
• "My mom and dad were big hippies and I spent time on communes. I just remember the smell of soybeans everywhere. People were making all sorts of strange things out of soybeans: food, clothing, paper, everything. I suppose if I'd gone to military school, maybe I'd be pining for something like Woodstock. But I'm certainly pining for what it represents, and I think that's what Ang was really after with the film." — Liev Schreiber, on Taking Woodstock. [Style.com]
• "I don't watch Jon & Kate, but I still want to punch that Jon douche in the face.his smarmy,fat alcoholic bloat&Ed Hardy wear piss me off" — Rose McGowan. [Twitter]
• "The Jay-Z controversy is great. We couldn't buy P.R. like this. I think Jay-Z said he saw Auto-Tune used in a Wendy's commercial, and that pushed him over the edge." — Marco Alpert, vice president of the company which markets Auto-Tune, on Jay-Z's latest single, "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)." [NY Times]
• "Fuck you Katy Perry, you fucking stupid, maybe 'not good for the gays,' title thieving, haven't heard much else, so not quite sure if you're talented, fucking little slut." — Jill Sobule. [The Rumpus]

We've talked about the Duggar-esque Quiverfull movement, in which Christian families have legions of kids to strengthen God's numbers. (Check out this great photo gallery of one Colorado family.) It seems these same folks are equally hipped on unassisted childbirth. (That's just mother, father, God, by the way: no midwife, no dula, no doctor.) Hmm. Lots of babies + no medical supervision equals...well, you guessed it, some correspondingly archaic medical problems. Most recently, Carri Chmielewski, mother of eight, ended up in intensive care and lost a baby due to an amniotic fluid embolism during an unassisted at-home birth.

While not all Quiverfulls scorn supervised birth, some hard-liners see the unassisted varietal as a natural extension of the submission to God's will that characterizes their lives. As Chmielewski herself wrote, "God never meant for man (Pregnant Women) to surrender himself (herself) to the total control of man (dr./technology, etc.) God considers that idolatry. We are to surrender ourselves to GOD." (In fact, her decision to seek out the advice of a midwife - which turned out to be bad - actually went against the strictest interpretetation of the creed.)

While some have called for actionable child neglect charges against parents like these, the Majikthise blog takes this view:

Criminalizing stupid birthing decisions is doing the Quiverfulls work for them. It's saying that women can't be trusted to make their own medical decisions. If you let people make their own decisions, a certain percentage of them will make spectacularly bad choices. Grown women have the right to refuse lifesaving treatment for stupid religious reasons, whether they are Jehovah's Witnesses foregoing blood transfusions, Christian scientists rejecting antibiotics, or Quiverfulls turning their backs on modern obstetrics. That's what it means to be an adult. Pregnant adults are still adults...Besides which, trying to prosecute unassisted birthers will just feed the persecution complex that makes the Quiverfull lifestyle seem alluring to its adherents. Worst of all, if unassisted birth is a crime, laboring women in trouble might refuse to seek lifesaving help.

That last point is particularly well-taken. And, especially with the New Jersey "C-section" case fresh in my mind, my instinct is to lean more towards free choice than paternalism. But at the same time, there's an element of the artificial to blithely letting people go their own way: these same people might home-school their kids, for instance (and do!) but the state still feels an obligation to see that the children meet certain basic government standards. However much certain sects may fight it, we do live in a nation governed by laws and rules. And while it becomes dicey - at the end of the day, it's great that a mother should have free choice over her body and her baby - I'd have no problem with a similar level of mandatory birthing education.

The other issue is the one that's harder for us to wrap our brains around. Quite simply, anyone voluntarily putting herself in this position is most likely better spiritually equipped to deal with the consequences than any pundit can understand. If you're living by the dictates of what the blogger calls "stupid religious reasons" then it stands to reason you believe in them pretty powerfully. What we call an avoidable tragedy, Cari's husband probably considers "God's will" (and indeed, he's thanked Him for only taking his son.) The bigger concern, for me, is that someone might be placed in this position against her will: a culture that demands total submission to the husband surely gives him jurisdiction in matters of birthing, too. And it's hard to know whether a woman on the brink of losing her life and her baby might not want, in that moment of clarity, at least the option of medical intervention.

My Womb for His Purposes: The Perils of Unassisted Childbirth in the Quiverfull Movement [Religion Dispatches]

God Is My OB-GYN: Unassisted Childbirth For Christ [Majikthise]
Life With A "Quiverfull" Family - The Story Behind The Story [Reuters]
Is God A Narcissist? [The Skptical OB]
Realted: Like Big Families? Meet The Quiverfulls
Not Wanting A Cesarean Qualifies As Mental Illness?

But look! Puppies! Apparently Button hasn't been getting a lot of sleep — you know new moms — and Button's owners, Nicola and Adam Morely, are working around the clock to keep the puppies, who all have Christmas names, happy. Clip above!

The democratic process is so American! Especially when done while sitting on the floor beneath a mural of a bald eagle, a frequent theme in the Duggar decor. Michelle Duggar attempted a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) but the baby was in the wrong position, and needed to come out two weeks earlier than planned. The most amazing thing though, was that Michelle said several times through the program that this will probably be their last baby. Should we start a pool on how many months from now she'll be washing down those words with a fistful of pre-natal pills?

• Jim and Michelle Duggar, who just welcomed their 18th child, say they're already considering number 19. "We both would love to have more," father Jim says. Attention, Duggars: THERE AREN'T ANY J NAMES LEFT. [People]

• Courtney Love is skipping her meds while recording her new album. "I'm off antidepressants for the moment because my album producer wants me to feel the rage, wants me to be really angry, wants me to face the demons," Love says, "And I am so f***ing angry!" [DailyExpress]

• Guns N'Roses drummer Steven Adler, a graduate of Dr. Drew's Celebrity Rehab, has been ordered by a judge to attend a state-sponsored drug rehab program. [Yahoo]

• Katie Holmes will be skipping the Golden Globes this year, even though her husband, Tom Cruise, has been nominated for his supporting role in Tropic Thunder. Instead, the actress is choosing to end her run in the Broadway show All My Sons: “Katie’s decided to stay and her do last show,” says her rep, “She won’t be going with Tom to the Globes. The cast of 'All My Sons' has been like a family and they want to end it together.”[FoxNews]

• Kristin Chenoweth has signed on as a cast member in David E. Kelley's newest series about wacky lawyers and their wacky lawyer ways. In Legally Mad, Chenoweth will play "Skippy Pylon, a cheerful and brilliant attorney who nonetheless exhibits flashes of psychosis — and enjoys being mistaken for a teenager."[Variety]

• Did Posh put the kibosh on a one-on-one interview between her husband Becks and reporter IIaria D'Amico? [DailyMail]

• Zhang Ziyi has been voted the most beautiful person in China by a Beijing newspaper. ""I don't pay a lot of attention to matters of appearance," Ziyi said in response, "Beautiful women are fundamentally independent and confident." [IHT]

• Cosmopolitan has apologized to Scarlett Johansson for fabricating quotes about her marriage: "Cosmopolitan would like to apologise to our readers and Scarlett Johansson for inaccuracies in our January issue where we said she talked about her marriage and her relationship with her husband. We now understand Ms Johansson has not commented publicly on her married life and did not do so on this occasion." Whoops! [Guardian]

• Jermaine Dupri is insisting that his girlfriend, Janet Jackson, is not pregnant, despite reports to the contrary. [US Magazine]

• Also? Britney Spears is not dating Benji Madden. And I am not in 2002, typing this, though it feels like I should be. [US Magazine]

• Baylee Littrell, 6-year-old son of Backstreet Boy Brian Littrell, has been hospitalized for undisclosed reasons. "He will be starting a treatment this afternoon," a message on Littrell's website reads, "and the Littrell family asks that all Backstreet Boys fans please remember him in prayer during this trying time." Get well soon! [People]

• Classic TV Game Show fans rejoice: The Newlywed Game is back! [FishbowlLA]

• Hugh Hefner suddenly doesn't seem so thrilled about the idea of ex-girlfriend Kendra Wilkinson's marriage: "“There may be a moment at the ceremony when I have second thoughts," Hefner says, "I may have to negotiate this." Yes, Hef. Because nothing says "true love" like another round of contract negotiations. [TheSun]

Their new little girl is Jordyn-Grace Makiya. They have used up so many "J" names that they ran out of Biblical ones, so they started getting inventive, which means that some of the girls—like big sister Jinger—have ready-made stripper names. [People]

Earlier: Matt Lauer: 'Hey, Duggars, What's With All The J Names?'
Family Planning

The Jim Bob & Michelle Duggar Family Official Website
Earlier: Didn't Like "Knocked Up"? Screw You.