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Tuesday was an “historic day for the LGBTQ struggle in Israel,” Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz said, at a news conference where he announced that Israel has lifted its surrogacy restrictions for same-sex couples.
Until now, the ability to become parents biologically through surrogacy was prohibited for same-sex couples and single men, but was allowed for heterosexual couples and single women. The removal of the ban is the outcome of a Supreme Court ruling from July 2021.
After a petition by gay rights activists led to the Supreme Court stating that the surrogacy ban violated the rights of single men and the LGBTQ+ community and therefore must be lifted within six months. However, this topic is not a new fight in Israel, for years surrogacy-equality has been a focus of the Israeli LGBTQ+ community’s activism.
In 2018, an estimated 100,000 people showed up in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv to protest against a surrogacy bill which extended eligibility to single women, but not to men, effectively preventing homosexual couples from having a child via a surrogate. Surrogacy is when a woman carries a baby for a couple who are unable to conceive or carry a child themselves for medical or physical reasons.
