The Jerusalem Report Magazine: Reporter : Reporter Article

Click for Contents

Click here to subscribe to The Jerusalem Report

P.O. Box 1805,Jerusalem 91017
Tel. 972-2-531-5440,
Fax: 972-2-537-9489
Advertising Fax:
972-2-531-5425,
Email Editorial: [email protected]
Subscriptions: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.jrep.com

Infertile women to benefit from a revolutionary Israeli bill
Netty C. Gross

FLASH 90

Labor MK Yael Dayan is confident that the Knesset will pass a law by the end of the year that allows infertile women to receive ova from government-paid donors. Such a measure would be "unique in the world," says Dayan, chairwoman of the Knesset Committee for the Advancement of the Status of Women.

Under the law, the government will finance the treatment, up to the birth of a recipient's second child. Donors, who may be either married or single - and in some cases family members of the recipient - will be paid about 3,000 shekels ($750) for each egg-harvesting and may undergo a maximum of three procedures. There is no limit on how many fertilization treatments infertile women, either married or single, can undergo. Dayan says each procedure runs into "tens of thousands of shekels. No country in the world provides this type of government-financed free fertility treatment."

Some 2,500 Israeli women are now awaiting egg donations. Currently, only Israeli women undergoing ova harvesting for the purpose of their own fertility treatments may donate eggs. And according to Dayan, "there are simply no egg donations to be had. Israeli women who have the financial means travel to Cyprus with their physicians in tow to acquire eggs. Women who don't have the money are stuck."

But now Dayan says she is confident that two egg-donation bills will come before the Knesset in early May. One of them is Dayan's own bill on the issue, submitted early last year after two senior gynecologists were arrested for allegedly pumping up patients with hormones and, without their knowledge, illegally harvesting eggs for implantation in private patients. A separate, government-sponsored bill followed, based on guidelines set by a Knesset-appointed committee headed by medical ethicist Dr. Mordechai Halperin of Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek hospital. Dayan expects the two proposals to be consolidated into one bill and passed into law by year's end.

Disagreements between the two proposals, now resolved, included questions about whether to allow married women to be donors. Initially, religious authorities insisted that donors be unmarried, on the theory that a child born of a married donor's egg and the sperm of a man other than her husband could, technically, be considered the product of adultery under religious law. The objection was dropped because the prevailing halakhic view is that the birth mother is the true parent.

There were also objections from some medical experts to allowing the Shas-controlled Health Ministry sole access to a national registry holding the identities of donors. The current accommodation calls for a specially appointed judge to supervise the registry.

In late March, Shas Health Minister Nissim Dahan tried to block the bills, saying his ministry was still studying the issue. But Dayan says Dahan "is a new minister who was just upset that he wasn't getting any credit. The bill will pass because Likud and Labor are united on this issue. It's a problem that affects all women."

Reporter