Single Mothers by Choice

So you want to have a baby and you have not found Mr. Right. There are many options and resources available to women who are considering starting a family. Many women are becoming single mothers by choice. Medical clinics specialize in reproductive medicine and are receptive to single parents by choice and willing to assist in all reasonable ways including helping people find an egg donor or sperm donor, performing in vitro fertilization procedures, and even screening gestational surrogates if the single intended parent needs to have a child by way of surrogacy.

There are many great options when it comes to finding egg or sperm donors. California Cryobank is one such option and there are other resources for sperm donors as well. If a single woman is of an age where she must or should consider making embryos with an egg donor, consider an agency such as Rite Options. Also, many IVF medical clinics have egg donation programs and an egg donor may be found directly from the medical clinic.

In the event there is medical or age-related issue such that a surrogate (gestational carrier) will be necessary, there are agencies to help find a qualified and screened surrogate to carry the baby. At Worldwide Surrogacy, both single intended mothers and single intended fathers, successfully find surrogates to carry the baby for them and go on to have their children and build their families.

The law for single parents is very favorable. Of course, if a single mother is carrying the baby herself, she is automatically the legal mother even if she uses an egg donor. There are egg donation laws and sperm donation laws that protect the rights of the recipient parents. These laws state that if the donation of gametes is made through a medical clinic and the embryos are created at the clinic, the donors have no parental rights or obligations. The intended single parents will be the legal parents.

Further, if a surrogate is used, there are states in the U.S. where a single parent, even if she is using both egg and sperm donor to create her embryos, may be legally designated as the legal parent of the child prior to the birth. A good surrogacy agency will make sure that the surrogate is on board to attend to the pregnancy in the way the intended mother would attend to the pregnancy. There will be quality medical care, medical insurance, and a team of professionals to support the surrogacy journey.

In this age of women building careers and staying focused on work throughout their twenties and thirties, it is not uncommon for women to find themselves in a situation where they need an egg donor. That actually brings to mind another possibility which is egg banking and fertility preservation. If a woman is not ready to have her children yet, but she wants to preserve her fertility, she may choose to undergo a medical process to produce as many eggs as possible during a cycle or even more than one cycle, to have her eggs retrieved through an egg retrieval process at a reproductive clinic, and then to have her eggs cryopreserved and stored for use at a later date.

All in all, there are options for single mothers by choice and single fathers by choice. It is amazing that doors are open for people to have children in alternative ways and that both medicine and the law support these options.