Last-chance mothers: some single Sisters over 40 "arrange" pregnancies, rely on sperm banks or adoption agencies

All over America, single Sisters in their 40s, many of them well-educated, well-traveled, and well-to-do, are breaking out of their picket-fence-planned lives as they hear their biological time clocks winding down. Some of these Sisters, like Marva Lewis and Donna Lindsay, adopted children (in 2001, single Black women made up 55 percent of public adoptions).

Others are making more unconventional choices and have decided to have a baby without Mr. Right. One of these Sisters, Kenya Jenkins of Pittsburgh, became a mother after buying donated samples from a sperm bank. Another, Melvina Lay, asked a friend to help her get pregnant and had an attorney draw up a contract covering both parties.

Lay, a 44-year-old Ventura County, Calif., firefighter, is one of 334,000 single Black American women between the ages of 35 and 44 who have never married or had children. Faced with a last-chance situation, some of these women are exploring other ways to become mothers.

Lay is planning to get pregnant by in vitro fertilization. The process involves stimulating the donor's ovaries to release eggs, fertilizing an egg by injecting it with a sperm, growing the embryo in a laboratory, and then implanting the embryo in the woman's uterus. Lay and a male friend are working with an attorney to spell out each person's rights and responsibilities regarding a baby.

Michelle Clopton, a 42-year-old Chicago businesswoman with an MBA in finance, is taking the process a step further. She is planning to have a baby naturally by a man she has dated. "I wouldn't pull a surprise," Clopton says. "I would want his approval."

Clopton knows her life will change with a baby. I have a wonderful life and a prosperous business," says the former stockbroker who owns a Chicago sports bar with her mother. "I have the freedom and flexibility to travel, but there is still something of a void in my life. Having a baby would stop the traveling for a couple of years, but I have a bigger responsibility in life to bring another life into the world."

Why are Clopton and Lay and many other single women in their 40s turning to these procedures?

One reason is that they are running out of time. A woman's chances of conceiving after age 40 decrease to about 5 percent. Most women in the "last chance" category know they are trying to beat the proverbial time clock. Most know that although they can marry later, their childbearing years are limited.

Another reason some women over 40 are turning to sperm banks or deciding to have a child out of wedlock is that they feel a void in their lives without children of their own. Chicago businesswoman Clopton spends most of her free time with her 6-year-old nephew. "There is a void knowing that he's not mine," she says. "The void won't be filled until I have a child of my own. Adoption won't completely fill it."

Clopton, Lay and others say they didn't purposely put off starting a family, but that rather timing in their relationships was always off for marriage and children. "It wasn't as if I wasn't open to marriage," says Lay, who was engaged two times. "It just didn't happen." Clopton added: "I'm 42 now, so I feel like if I'm going to do it, I need to have a baby like yesterday."

An increasing number of Black women are turning to the $500 million-a-year fertility industry.

Since 1953, 200,000 births have resulted from men donating sperm, which women purchase to help them get pregnant. But Dallas fertility specialist Dr. Lisa King says many Black women who come to her office inquiring about getting pregnant with the help of a sperm bank don't continue the process that can cost in excess of $15,000. An estimated 40 percent of clients at the California Cryobank are single women, and some of them try up to age 47 to see if sperm donors will help them fill the void of not having children.

Kenya Jenkins was a client at the Fairfax Cryobank. As the accountant approached her 40th birthday, she knew she needed to take action.

"I always thought I'd be married by the time I was 40," Jenkins says. "Some of my girlfriends my age have grandchildren."

So Jenkins (not her real name) took matters into her own hands. First, she asked male friends if they would help her get pregnant. When they refused, Jenkins turned to a fertility doctor and the sperm bank in Fairfax, Va.

Over a five-month period she returned to her doctor's office to undergo intrauterine insemination, a procedure in which the doctor injects sperm into the uterus. After five attempts and nearly $10,000 (most of which was paid by insurance), she became pregnant. Today, she has a 6-year-old son. "I never regretted having my son this way," says Jenkins, now 46, who doesn't want her identity known because she hasn't told her son yet how he was conceived. "I would have missed bringing him into the world if I hadn't gotten pregnant when I did. I still haven't met a man I want to marry."

A sperm bank was one of the options Donna Lindsay of Dallas tried before she eventually adopted. Lindsay, a regional sales director for a pharmaceutical company, didn't try to start a family when she was married and in her 20s because, she says, she was working and her husband was in medical school and they couldn't afford children. Later, when the divorced Lindsay was 41 and her boyfriend of six years didn't want children, she decided to have a child alone, she says.