Born during the handful of years between Roe v. Wade and the first successful birth from in vitro fertilization, I’d been told all my life that I had a choice about when and how to start a family. Making use of that apparent freedom, moreover, had felt like a responsibility: something I owed the women before me, like my gay mother, who, after two closeted decades, had finally left her heterosexual marriage. Or her mother, married to an abusive man until the day he died. Or my other grandmother, who sought an illegal abortion at the outbreak of WWII. If earlier generations had fought for the right to choose, it seemed like I should use it. More recently, reaching forty and finding myself still single, I’d decided to have a child alone. This meant my new family wouldn’t be conventional, but I was OK with that. The one I come from isn’t, either. I’d also never assumed that being a single mother would be easy, though I’d certainly never imagined that I wouldn’t have the freedom to choose my child’s biological father.

😂😂😂