Israel's Supreme Court allows surrogacy for same-sex couples, long struggle gets over

A ruling by Israel's top court on Sunday, July 11, ended a decade-long legal struggle and paved the path for same-sex couples to have children through surrogacy, which activists welcomed as a big step forward for LGBTQ rights in Israel. The court ordered that restrictions on surrogacy for same-sex couples and single fathers in Israel must be abolished within six months, providing authorities time to prepare while making it clear that the change is permanent. “We won! And now it’s final,” the petitioners said in a statement, the Times of Israel reported. “This is a big step toward equality, not only for LGBT in Israel, but for everyone in Israel.”

For heterosexual couples and single women, surrogacy was already legal. However, the rule did not apply to same-sex couples, and those who were unable to have children through surrogate moms in Israel turned to surrogates in other countries.

A decade long struggle

Since 2010, when a male same-sex couple first petitioned the court to overturn limits on surrogacy, the legal battle to expand access to surrogacy in Israel has dragged on. Although their first petition was unsuccessful, they followed up in 2015 with a fresh one in collaboration with LGBTQ rights organisations. Surrogacy eligibility was increased to unmarried women under a law passed in 2018, but it prompted outrage because LGBTQ persons were left out.

In February 2020, Israel's supreme court found that prohibitions on gay couples "disproportionately harmed the right to equality and the right to parenthood of these groups and are illegal." It did, however, leave them in place for up to a year, giving Israel's parliament until March 2021 to modify the law.

According to the Times of Israel, the deadline was later extended to September, but the government last week asked the court to rule on the matter because altering the law would be "unfeasible" in the current political climate.

According to Agence France-Presse, ultra-Orthodox lawmakers have vetoed a move to increase surrogacy access in the year since the highest court verdict. And Israel's new ruling coalition, which came to power last month with a slender majority, is made up of a diverse group of parties that span the political spectrum — and disagree on LGBTQ matters. While the Islamist Ra'am party opposes gay rights, Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz, a member of the coalition's socialist party, is openly gay.