Periodically on the discussion boards, or in individual emails to me, women will ask for information about Pacific Reproductive Services, which is a less well-known sperm bank that was formed in 1984 to help single women and lesbian couples who were facing discrimination in family-building from the medical community.
I've been looking for additional sponsors to help develop Choice Mom resources, and one that has long been interested in working with us is European Sperm Bank USA.
It's finally here! The Choice Mom Guide to Donor Sperm. Click here for the e-book, available as a complimentary guidebook for anyone who is choosing or has chosen sperm donation to build their family.
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.
There is a national discussion starting in the Australian Parliament about how to regulate and legislate donor conception practices across federal and state lines.
Several years ago I got a call from the long-time co-founder of California Cryobank (CCB), gently and intelligently "checking me out" as an educational partner in his attempt to help his colleagues in the sperm bank industry understand why some policies needed to change. Since then...
A woman with two young children wrote to say that a half-sibling of her kids was traveling to the U.S. from another country and wanted to meet, since the children shared the same sperm donor. The mother didn't feel prepared to talk to her kids about how they were connected, yet didn't want to miss the opportunity to meet.
ONLY TEN COPIES LEFT IN PRINT! Years ago I collaborated with Wendy and Ryan Kramer, the mother-and-son co-founders of Donor Sibling Registry, on some new tools for families created by donor conception. This was one of them.
This is one in a series of Q&As I am conducting with members of the donor sperm industry. The goal is to help educate Choice Moms-in-the-making about important policies that should help inform their decision about which bank to work with, even before choosing a donor.
I lived in New York City 18 years, so it's always a little odd for me to fly in and out of town for a weekend workshop, as I've done the last two visits. But we do pack a lot of information-sharing and support into these events, and the NYC event held in July 2010 was quite dense with resources. Here is some of what we shared.
While in London I had the pleasure of meeting a woman at the Choice Mom gathering who told me about how she had decided some time ago that she definitely would not become a single mom -- partly after reading my "Choosing Single Motherhood" book. 18 months later, however, she's back on the path. I asked her to share her story about the thinking process.
It is more important to start your donor search with selection of the right sperm bank, before identifying donor characteristics. Arm yourself with this checklist of questions to begin the process.
I have talked to many experts -- including donor-conceived adults -- about the pros, cons, strengths and weaknesses of anonymous and open-identity donor conception as the method to building a family. Listen in:
We're building an audio library featuring the best of our Choosing Single Motherhood radio show and Choice Chat podcasts. You can order the first of this collection, "Choice Moms Answer the Tough Questions: Do I Have a Dad?" (formerly a CD product, available here for immediate $7 download).
Once upon a time, doctors advised infertile couples to keep the fact of donor conception a secret from everyone, including the child. Led partly by the lessons of adoption, and especially with more importance today placed on knowing ones genetic markers and family medical histories, being able to make limited contact with the donor someday has become encouraged.