Israel: single women to have surrogacy, gays denied
The laws when proposed were met by spontaneous protests in Tel Aviv by thousands of people, who in some cases blocked traffic. Protesters said that the laws were the first in many years that specifically targetted and discriminated against gay couples.
Until now, surrogacy in Israel has been only available to heterosexual married couples.
Likud Member of the Knesset, Amir Ohana, who is gay, sought unsuccessfully to amend the Bill to enable gay couples to access surrogacy. He told of establishing a family through surrogacy, having to go abroad to do so and the difficulties this created: “When I and my partner wanted to establish a family, we were forced to go to a country thousands of miles away. The twins were born before full term and we could not be there. We turned the world upside down in order to find a Jew who didn’t even know me, who lived close by, to be there so someone would be there by their side.”
