In accordance with a Supreme Court decision last year, Israel’s health minister announced that LGBTQ parents in the nation will be allowed to have children through surrogacy.
“Full equality. That is the simple demand and it is the goal of the LGBT struggle, the long struggle of my community,” Israel’s out gay Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz said, according to the Associated Press. “Equality before the law and equality of parenthood.”
The law paves the way for queer couples, single fathers, and transgender folks to have kids through surrogacy, which is when an individual carries a baby for a couple or individual who cannot birth kids of their own. The implementation of the new policy, which takes effect January 11, marks the conclusion of a legal process that unfolded over the course of the last two years. In 2020, the nation’s Supreme Court ruled that a surrogacy law in Israel discriminated against gay couples because it allowed single women to utilize surrogacy but not queer couples.
