Humans were made to reproduce - Woman who birthed eight children defends mother of 10

Hoping to inspire Stacy-Ann Murray Brown, a mother of 10 who has faced harsh backlash for having that many children at age 40, Tesha Allison, an attorney at law and mother of eight, believes that humans were designed to produce offspring.

"If there is anything that we were designed to do before we do other things is procreate. The only place where we are hearing screaming about how many children are born is in the black and brown community," she said. Murray Brown told THE STAR earlier this week that a woman was made by God to have out her lot, and Allison, 42, who resides in Florida where she owns and operates her own law firm, agrees.

"I don't understand how Jamaica is a Christian society and they get so upset when people have children, even though the Bible says be fruitful and multiply. I don't get it," she said.

"It is not my place to tell anyone how many children they should or should not have. I respect other persons' free will, so they should respect mine. The world is under populated, but well, there is a shortage of males, and if we are going to do heterosexual relationships, we are going to have a problem down the road, because they are dying young and they are in prison," Allison added. Her children are ages 28, 23, 21, 17, 16, 15, 14 and 11.

She spent her younger years in Clarendon where she got pregnant with her first child at age 14.

"When I walk on the road, the grown women would curse and say I was going to end up breed and have whole heap a pickney and be nothing in life. It was one hell. It was so bad that even one of my relatives told me that she didn't want to be seen in public with me because I am a disgrace. That was horrible and I thought I died and was like a zombie," she said.

Allison continued her secondary education at a private institution in Clarendon and used to break from classes daily to prepare soup for sale. That money was used to take care of her daughter. In 1996, Allison, then 17, said she left her toddler and migrated to live with her father in New York. Migrating to Florida at age 22, Allison enrolled at Barry University in 2001 and subsequently pursued a law degree at FIU College of Law. By age 32, she had seven more children "for one father".

"The only support system we had in Florida was his mother but she died days before I was supposed to take the bar exam. At that time I was pregnant with baby number seven," she said. "I remember being in labour with one of my children and taking an exam. I left straight from the exam room to the hospital and gave birth that same day."

She said she never planned on having eight children, partly because she refused to get abortions.

"When I got pregnant, I just remember saying 'OK God, you give me these children so you are going to feed them'. I tried birth control and they didn't work for me and I almost ended up in the hospital with a stroke," she said. But taking care of the children while attending university wasn't the hardest part.

"Just like the lady with the 10 children, there were some really bad comments from my countrymen. There were verbal attacks from both men and women. People use to say is f**k I love f**k. They would say the most disgraceful things even in the presence of my children," said Allison, who was adamant to be her own boss.

"No one was going to hire me, and the rigour that they would have wanted from me, I would not be able to keep because I have the kids. I could not work 16 or 14 hours daily, so I had to do something that created a schedule that facilitate my children," she said. Allison said she does not plan on having any more children, however, if it's God's will, she would be grateful.