Parenting in Israel: 'Make babies, regardless of age and sexual attraction’

Faced with the anguish of their biological clock, Israeli women have, since 1988, an ally of choice: the law. 

In Israel, there is no need to be in a relationship, to be under 42, or to be heterosexual to have the right to bear or raise a child. Everyone is entitled to it up to the age of 45. And egg donation after this age - trying to get pregnant with the egg of a younger woman - is even possible up to 54 years old.

The Jewish state has the highest number of invitro fertilizations per capita in the world, a procedure responsible for five percent of all births, according to data from Israel's Health Ministry. And that number keeps growing.

Israelis want babies. Whether through biblical or scientific techniques, as public policies and medical prowess continue to bring Israel to the top of the OECD countries in terms of fertility rate.

Twenty-three years after allowing sperm donation to single women, Israel validated in July 2021 the use of surrogate mothers for Israeli men, whether single or in a relationship with another man - a revolution for gay couples who traveled by the hundreds each year to the United States or Nepal to choose an oocyte donor and a surrogate mother, for around $100,000.

"I continue to repay each month the loan taken out to conceive my son Idan in Mexico," said 40-year-old Tal. 

"My husband and I wanted it more than anything. Today, and since the legalization of the use of surrogate mothers in Israel, having a child would have been much simpler from every point of view."

Israel is one of the countries in which singles and gay couples, male or female, have the most children.

"These children live like all the others in Israel," Tal said, adding: "Idan has two dads, and I think in every class he's been in since he was young, at least one kid had either a single mom or two same-sex parents. It's becoming extremely common."

As proof, Tel Aviv City Hall replaced the words "dad" and "mom" in social language with the word "parent."

The market for purchasing sperm, or oocyte, is indeed developing in Israel, where in addition to the sperm banks offered by public hospitals, private banks are appearing and offering extended criteria in the choice of the donor.

Ela just celebrated her first birthday in Tel Aviv. Jessica, her mother, always told herself that if she didn't meet "the right one" by the age of 40, she wouldn't close the door on sperm donation.

"The years passed, and none of the men I was in a relationship with wanted to commit to anything serious. So I stopped waiting, I stopped all relationships, and I started the process."

Jessica knows that her daughter's father is an opera singer. In public sperm banks, women can have access to certain information - eye color, hair color, occupation - and choose accordingly.

Today, in Israel, single Jewish women no longer consider that their motherhood depends on a man. And the powerful Orthodox Jewish lobby seems, for the moment, to close its eyes and not ask too many questions, or at least bow to the Israeli pronatalist current that is sweeping away everything in its path.