Surrogacy law in Israel

Apparently it is legal for heterosexual couples to pay surrogate mothers in Israel, but not for same sex couples, and there is legislation being proposed to change this. As usual, it's complicated.
Ministers will vote on surrogacy for gay couples

"The new surrogacy bill is up for vote: The Knesset Ministerial Committee on Legislative Affairs will discuss Health Minister Yael German's (Yesh Atid) bill Monday, allowing gay couples to use surrogacy services in Israel.
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It is still unclear whether there will be a majority to pass the bill..
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"According to the existing "surrogacy law", only heterosexual couples can have access to paid surrogacy. Two years ago the Mor-Yosef committee was asked to decide on the matter and ruled that gay couples should be allowed to use surrogacy under the condition that the surrogate mother is not paid.

"According to the new bill, Health Minister German supplements what she considers a "revolution," allowing gay couples paid surrogacy – much like heterosexual couples.

"This move – which is expected to bring great demand for surrogacy – is not free of limitations. Couples will be allowed to undergoing only two surrogacy procedures, the couples' mothers and grandmothers will not be allowed to be surrogates; however the possibility of having a family member as surrogate does expand to sisters and cousins.

"In addition the bill limits the age of men turning to surrogacy to 54 and not without limitation of age as it has been until now. On the other hand, the allowed surrogacy age has gone up to 38, two years more than what the existing law permits.

Commercial surrogacy: legal in California, illegal in NY

I woke up in England this morning preparing to give the second of two Marshall Lectures, in which I'll talk about kidney exchange, and repugnant transactions. What better to see in the NY Times then the story about a same sex married couple in NY that had a child via gestational surrogacy in California, because it's illegal in NY. But one of the husbands is a NY State Senator who is introducing legislation in the hope of changing that.

And Surrogacy Makes 3: In New York, a Push for Compensated Surrogacy
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS FEB. 19, 2014

"They had their baby in California because if they had had her in New York, they would have been breaking a 1992 New York law that bars commercial surrogacy contracts and equates them with baby-selling — a legacy of the notorious Baby M case of the 1980s.*

"Now Mr. Hoylman, as a novice state senator, is in a position to do something about it. He is the co-sponsor of a proposed law that would overturn the current law and make compensated surrogacy legal in New York State.

"Surrogate baby-making has long been a path taken by the affluent and celebrities, partly because it takes good legal advice and money to accomplish. But in recent years, it has been growing among gay men, who in a fundamentally conservative embrace of family values, see having children and building a family as the logical next step after getting married.

“Not to be cliché, but you know how the phrase goes — first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby and the baby carriage,” said Allison Steinberg, a spokeswoman for the Empire State Pride Agenda, which has endorsed the bill.

The bill’s supporters argue that it makes no sense for New York, which has a large number of fertility clinics, not to mention a flourishing gay community, not to be able to offer commercial surrogacy to those who want it. And they say that making surrogacy more widely available could reduce the exorbitant costs, easily as much as $100,000 per baby."
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*"The Baby M case, in which Mary Beth Whitehead, left with her husband, Richard, refused to give up custody of a baby girl she agreed to bear for a New Jersey couple, led to a New York law prohibiting paid surrogacy."
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"Surrogate births are a small but growing part of the in vitro fertilization industry. Conservatively, about 1,600 babies a year in the United States are born through gestational surrogacy (which now accounts for almost all surrogacies), more than double the number in 2004, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
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"But driven by the law of supply and demand, a first-time egg donor could be paid $8,000 to $10,000, and a first-time surrogate $30,000 and up, bringing the cost of a no-frills contract to $75,000 to $120,000 with medical, legal and agency fees.

“You basically have to take out a loan to have a child,” Mr. Hoylman said.

"Agencies prefer to contract with surrogates who are married with children, because they have a proven ability to have a healthy baby and are less likely to have second thoughts about giving up the child.

"Conversely, gay couples are popular among surrogates. “Most of my surrogates want same-sex couples,” said Darlene Pinkerton, the owner of A Perfect Match, the agency in San Diego that Mr. Hoylman used. Women unable to become pregnant often go through feelings of jealousy and loss, she said. But with gay men, that is not part of the dynamic, so “the experience is really positive for the surrogate.”

"Or as her husband, Tom, a third-party reproductive lawyer, put it, “Imagine instead of just having one husband doting on you, you have three guys now sending you flowers.”

"New York has one of the harshest surrogacy laws in the country, along with Arizona, Indiana, Michigan, Nebraska and the District of Columbia.
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"It is legal in New York for a volunteer to carry a baby without pay, known as altruistic or compassionate surrogacy. And New Yorkers find ways around the law by shipping frozen embryos to clinics in nearby surrogacy-friendly states — Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts — for implantation. In New Jersey, paid surrogacy is still considered risky because of case law going back to Baby M. In 2012, Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a law that would have permitted some types of payment, saying he wanted more discussion of such “profound change in the traditional beginnings of a family.”

"Historically, the legal aversion to surrogacy stems from a sort of Margaret Atwood, “Handmaid’s Tale” fear that it lends itself to unnatural social engineering and the subjugation of women. This led to an unusual alliance of feminists, civil libertarians and the Catholic church in the early 1990s, when the New York Catholic Conference joined with the New York Civil Liberties Union and the National Organization for Women to oppose surrogacy.

"The Baby M case led to a pioneering court ruling on the validity of a surrogate-mother contract, and its outcome had a strong impact on New York because it played out across the river in New Jersey. Mary Beth Whitehead was a young homemaker with two children, in a rocky marriage to a sanitation worker, when she agreed in 1985 to have another man’s baby for $10,000.

"Soon after giving birth, she took the baby to Florida and renounced her fee, saying she wanted to keep the child.

"On appeal, the New Jersey Supreme Court restored her parental rights while leaving custody of Baby M with her biological father and his wife. “This is the sale of a child, or at the very least, the sale of a mother’s right to her child, the only mitigating factor being that one of the purchasers is the father,” the high court said.

"“So much has changed since Baby M,” said Sonia Ossorio, president of the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women.

For one thing, Ms. Whitehead was artificially inseminated using her own egg and the prospective father’s sperm, a process now disdained as “traditional” surrogacy. Today, the pregnancy would involve a third-party egg, so the surrogate would not be genetically related to the baby.

The new technology has given rise to a whole new language — gestational carrier, instead of surrogate mother, “intended parents,” “collaborative reproduction.”

Womb transplants in Sweden (where surrogacy is illegal)

The NY Times has the story: Swedish Doctors Transplant Wombs Into 9 Women

 "STOCKHOLM — Nine women in Sweden have successfully received transplanted wombs donated from relatives in an experimental procedure that has raised some ethical concerns. The women will soon try to become pregnant with their new wombs, the doctor in charge of the pioneering project has revealed.

"The women were born without a uterus or had it removed because of cervical cancer. Most are in their 30s and are part of the first major experiment to test whether it's possible to transplant wombs into women so they can give birth to their own children.

"In many European countries, including Sweden, using a surrogate to carry a pregnancy isn't allowed.
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"Some experts have raised concerns about whether it's ethical to use live donors for an experimental procedure that doesn't save lives. But John Harris, a bioethics expert at the University of Manchester, didn't see a problem with that as long as donors are fully informed. He said donating kidneys isn't necessarily life-saving, yet is widely promoted.

"Dialysis is available, but we have come to accept and to even encourage people to take risks to donate a kidney," he said.

"Brannstrom said the nine womb recipients are doing well. Many already had their periods six weeks after the transplants, an early sign that the wombs are healthy and functioning.
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"None of the women who donated or received wombs has been identified. The transplants began in September 2012 and the donors include mothers and other relatives of the recipients.
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"The transplant operations did not connect the women's uteruses to their fallopian tubes, so they are unable to get pregnant naturally. But all who received a womb have their own ovaries and can make eggs. Before the operation, they had some removed to create embryos through in-vitro fertilization. The embryos were then frozen and doctors plan to transfer them into the new wombs, allowing the women to carry their own biological children.
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""If this had been possible when I was younger, no doubt I would have been interested," she said. Gimre, who has two foster children, said the only option for women like her to have biological children is via surrogacy, which is illegal in many European countries, including Norway and Sweden.
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"The technique used in Sweden, using live donors, is somewhat controversial. In Britain, doctors are also planning to perform uterus transplants, but will only use wombs from dying or dead people. That was also the case in Turkey. Last year, Turkish doctors announced their patient got pregnant but the pregnancy failed after two months.

"Mats has done something amazing and we understand completely why he has taken this route, but we are wary of that approach," said Dr. Richard Smith, head of the U.K. charity Womb Transplant UK, which is trying to raise 500,000 pounds ($823,000) to carry out five operations in Britain.

"He said removing a womb for donation is like a radical hysterectomy but it requires taking a bigger chunk of the surrounding blood vessels to ensure adequate blood flow, raising the risk of complications for the donor. Smith said British officials don't consider it ethical to let donors take such chances for an operation that isn't considered life-saving.
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"Doctors in Saudi Arabia performed the first womb transplant in 2000, using a live donor, but it had to be removed after three months because of a blood clot."