Brody's Notes... Israeli Gay Couple Seek Surrogacy Rights

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) Feb 10 | The Health Ministry in Israel is currently considering a change to its procedures and rules that would allow Lesbian & Gay couples to have access to use of surrogate mothers.

The Ministry's Chief Legal adviser, Mira Huebner-Harel, speaking before the conference of the Israel Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology, said on Tuesday that the Health Ministry is planning to establish a committee to update the law that currently only heterosexual couples use of surrogates. According to Ms. Harel; 

"The traditional family unit has been changing lately, a man, woman and child was good, but the trend is changing, and we know of male couples who travel across the sea to have children through surrogates. We have to bring all the new aspects into orderly legislation, and it's best to do that before the High Court orders us to," she said." 

Speaking before the same conference yesterday, one of Israel's leading gynecologists, Professor Shlomo Mashiach of Assuta Medical Center in Tel Aviv, said Israel should move quickly to reverse the "intolerable discrimination" that he said in effect prohibits gay men from having children. 

 "We have to move the timetable forward quickly, and allow gay couples in Israel to have children," he said at the conference. "There is injustice and discrimination in favor of lesbians, who can have children [biologically], in contrast to gay men, whose right to do so is being withheld. Such discrimination is intolerable." 

Under the current Israeli Law, gay couples are banned from becoming surrogate parents, the law does allow for unmarried heterosexual couples to become surrogates and allows couples of any age to become surrogate parents, although the ministry is looking into setting a maximum age limit. The age of women seeking to become mothers through surrogates has been on the rise, and a 52-year-old woman was recently granted approval to use a surrogate.  Additionally,  the man who donated the sperm to a surrogate mother is listed as the father, and the sperm donor's partner can be listed as the mother only after adopting the child.

A local gay couple has recently asked the Health Ministry for permission to have a child in Israel through a surrogate mother, and Huebner-Harel said the ministry should amend Israeli law, which requires all such requests to go through the ministry's surrogate law committee, before the couple petitions the High Court of Justice.

Israel News Senior Correspondent Aviad Glickman reports today on ynetnews.com: 
Yoav Arad Pinkas and Itai Pinkas, both 37, will petition the High Court on Wednesday with a request that the State be ordered to allow them to become parents through surrogacy. In their petition, they will claim that despite having all medical authorizations, the committee refused to recognize them because the Surrogacy Law stipulates that parents are necessarily a man and a woman. The two men, will ask the court to order the committee for authorizing fetus carrying arrangements within the Health Ministry to recognize them as parents under the Surrogacy Law.  

"The language of the law was born of an archaic reality that has undergone a comprehensive change in the past decade and a half that have passed since the law was legislated," they wrote in their petition, which will be submitted through Attorney Dori Spivak, from the Tel Aviv University's law department."

In the past five years, the couple has tried various methods of becoming parents, many of which have required significant resources. A number of years ago, they tried to have a child with a woman. However, after about a year of in-vitro fertilization treatments, she had a miscarriage.

Regarding the option of using a surrogate mother from abroad, the couple will claim in their indictment that "this is a track riddled with hardships that is possible only for those with significant resources while depriving a couple from a low socio-economic level."
The two said on Tuesday that because of the hurdles in their path, they are left with no other choice but to turn to the High Court: 

"We are petitioning the High Court in order to rectify the wanton discrimination against us. There is no reason that as a married couple recognized by the State that we should not enjoy parenthood like any other couple."

 Itai Pinkas
 Photo By Osnat Krasnansky