Please welcome to the blogosphere Charlotte and Betsy, who recently launched one of the best-titled blogs I’ve seen in a while: Turkey Baster and Bottle of Wine. Their subtitle clarifies: “On being a queer, non-gestational parent.”
Five million babies around the world have now been born through in vitro fertilization (IVF), reported experts at a European conference this week. Not all of us lesbians create our families that way, of course (the technique is more often used by straight couples having trouble conceiving)—but since my spouse and I did (my egg, her womb), I thought it was worth a mention.
This week’s roundup is chock-full of superheroes and moms who rock (literally).
MeiBeck “Chino” and Maya Scott-Chung are lesbian moms raising a seven-year-old daughter. When they wanted to add another child to their family, but had trouble conceiving, they discovered that the only way they could get access to assisted reproductive services was to pretend that one of them was in a heterosexual relationship with their known donor (whom they had used to conceive their daughter).
This week’s quote comes from Catherine Couvert, a lesbian mom in Northern Ireland, who addresses her country’s failure to move ahead with a proposal allowing joint adoption by same-sex and unmarried couples.
Lots of good stuff this week, including some great personal stories as well as much-needed research on LGBT families of color. Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Painting one’s pregnant belly is apparently the in thing. The women at both Two Mothers McGill and The Owl and the Octopus have recently posted pictures of their artful abdomens.
Back in December, I wrote about A. K. Summers new online graphic memoir, Pregnant Butch. She’s recently finished posting the last pages of Chapter One and the first few pages of Chapter Two—which cover the beginning of her second trimester—so I thought this would be a good time to remind readers of her work and encourage you to take a look. (Some pages are NSFW; we’re talking about human biology here.)
Also, I realized I’d never posted the full interview of Summers I did for my newspaper column, so here it is.
Conceiving Family, a documentary that follows five same-sex couples in Canada along the path to parenthood, is ironically named—all of the couples adopt, rather than biologically conceive, to bring children into their families.
Over 100,000 children in the U.S. are awaiting foster or adoptive homes. The non-profit RaiseAChild.US wants to help them. On March 27, the organization announced it is partnering with the Human Rights Campaign Foundation on a pilot project to recruit LGBT foster and adoptive parents.
