Three noteworthy news items to share with you this week....

As I begin exploring the area of embryo adoption for the Choice Mom community, I am finding partners in the area who can talk us through the wide open frontier it seems to be right now. Here are my notes from one recent conversation.

Women on the Choice Mom discussion board are talking to each other this week about dealing with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS). About 1 in 10 women find out eventually, often when they are unsuccessfully trying to conceive, that they suffer from PCOS, which is largely a hormonal imbalance.

At the recent ASRM convention for those in the fertility industry, Choice Mom friend and therapist Andrea Braverman led a discussion titled "Wrinkled Parents: Medical, Ethical, and Psychological Issues of Parenting at an Older Age."

As a Choice Mom, this black woman wrote to me to say she'd been invited to contribute to the September 22nd No Wedding, No Womb blogging campaign to bring attention within the black community to the idea that single black women should stop having children on their own.

A woman who is preparing to write about the Choice Motherhood lifestyle in a community that doesn't think single parenting is such a good thing asked me to offer some resources. I realized that many of you might benefit from some of it, in your own conversations with others.

My blog about pivot points having more impact on our kids than a "lack" of something in their life prompted a comment from a single dad. His comment was long, and I thought it was good fodder for a new post on the "support network" theme of the month on ChoiceMoms.org, so I'm using it here.

A few years ago a producer for noted conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly called to test me for a potential debate with his boss about why Choice Moms dislike men. Maybe it's because I was pretty easy-going in my responses, but I was never booked for the show. In his recent remarks about Choice Motherhood, however, I see he still has a bug up his

submitted by Christy
My daughter is 2.5 years old. She is a little girl who doesn't need to ask a lot of questions, doesn't seem to need a lot of prep information, and simply adjusts at the time to whatever is happening around her. She doesn't yet ask why she doesn't have a dad, or who her donor is. But other kids are now starting to do so.

Lesbian and gay couples, and single women, have long been presumed by many to offer "worse" family structure for kids compared to two-parent heterosexual marriages. One new study reported in Time magazine indicates something we've long suspected. That might be a huge presumption.

I returned from a great primitive island camping trip with another Choice Mom, two dads, and the seven kids we have who have known each other for years. And one of the 30 emails waiting for me from the long weekend was the link to a blog from Kat Wilder, who is trying to understand who Choice Moms are, and why we do what we do.

Someone recently posted on one of the Choice Mom blogs that a friend of hers was intending to have sex with a stranger in order to get pregnant, and not tell the man. Not surprisingly, this made the friend uncomfortable.

I admit that I'm a fan of Sandra Bullock. So when I learned that she was becoming a Choice Mom through adoption, after her divorce finalizes, and I was asked to comment by Fertility Authority, I was more than happy to send an open letter on behalf of our community. Here's some of what I said:

It's been a big week for keeping up with media requests. NOT, as I had expected, because of my recent debate with a father's rights advocate (thanks to ALL of you for adding your voice to the comments on PublicSquare.net that show our rationality), but simply accidental. Thought you might be interested in hearing what I've been repeating this week about who we are.

Well here it is...the public debate between a Glenn Sacks father's rights crony (Robert Franklin) and myself on PublicSquare.net. Read, laugh, seethe, comment. I actually love the opportunity to offer a rational perspective, even if my opponent has a decidedly different viewpoint. Such as Franklin's view that Choice Moms often trick men into having kids and then lie to keep them out of the child's life. Here's a synopsis, with links to the full debate.

A 40-year-old woman has been involved for five years with a man who doesn't think he wants a child. They broke up a few years ago because she wanted a child, and he said he'd go along with it. But she now realizes that's probably not going to happen.

Choice Mom Lori Gottlieb made headlines two years ago when she wrote an Atlantic Monthly piece suggesting that maybe single women like her, opting to have kids alone, were simply too picky about finding a partner. Now she's made headlines again with her New York Times best-selling book.

A fight broke out in the Choice Mom community when the subject of gender selection came up. When so many people are longing to have a child, being disappointed about having one gender over another seems indulgent to some. But it is common to have a vision about which sex you'll be raising.

A woman on the discussion board asked whether she would be capable of raising an African-American child, as a white woman. Here is one of the many great responses she got from Julia, whose child was adopted from Ethiopia, responded differently:

When Pew Center released its research report in January 2010 indicating that women are graduating from college in bigger numbers than men, it led to some discourse about why, then, so many of us are facing this Choice Mom decision.

When a woman posted about her surprise -- and some trepidation -- about finding out she would be the mother to a boy, it led in many sideways paths to a lengthy discussion on the board (nearly 100 posts!) about, in a nutshell:

One woman on the Choice Mom discussion board noticed a pattern -- that others have agreed with -- about who tends to disapprove of the Choice Mom path, and who does not: