National Health or Procreation Insurance? - Parenthood at Every Age, Every Price and Subsidized by the State?

Hezi Margalit

Abstract

The research will focus on the contemporary anomaly Israeli police concerning subsidizing the various Assisted Reproductive Technologies by the state. For sociological, demographical, religious and security reasons the State of Israel invests the most largest amounts of money to develop and use the various Assisted Reproductive Technologies. Israel, today, has the highest per capita consumption rate of infertility therapy, with In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) the most prevalent. This situation is sustained by an uniquely generous public health policy, that poses hardly any restrictions on the eligibility of Israel’s citizens for infertility treatments within the National Health Insurance (NHI) system. The situation recently worsened when the Israeli Knesset passed the 2010 Eggs Donation Law that extends the eligibility limitation on the age of the mother from 51 to 54 and even covers all the expenses in some incidents of egg donation by the State of Israel.

Given the health risks as well as the emotional and financial costs involved in the excessive use of IVF, especially in the case of the potential mother’s advanced age, this pattern of regulation and consumption calls for a most careful, ethical and legal consideration of this law’s implications. In this research, I intend to reconsider the legitimacy, efficiency and feasibility of the Assisted Reproductive Technologies Israeli legal regulation, from the legal, medical, economic and bioethics point of view. For example, the latest empirical medical evidence shows that the use of IVF endangers both the mother and her infant, especially as the mother advances in age. In the conclusion of this research, I will argue that contemporary Israeli policy should be carefully reconsidered as to whether it is logical to invest huge amounts of money in an almost futile effort to encourage giving birth at every age, at any price and still subsidized by the state.