More Floridians becoming single mothers by choice

By Jamie Malernee South Florida Sun-Sentinel
March 31, 2008

Lisa Bell spent years looking for Mr. Right.

At 36, she stopped pining, and soon found the love of her life:Her daughter, Emily.

Today, the girl is 3, with big brown eyes and a head of curls.

"I finally accepted that Mr. Right — or even Mr. So-So — wasn't coming," said Bell, 41, of Delray Beach. "I always knew I wanted to be a mother, so it was, 'OK, I'm going to do this.' "

Bell belongs to the South Florida chapter of a club called Single Mothers by Choice. The group's members are women who have decided to have children without a partner. They often go to great lengths — choosing donor sperm and going through expensive and painful fertility treatments, or hacking through the paperwork jungle of the adoption process — to do so. the rest