Scarce Medical Resources? - Procreation Rights in a Jewish and Democratic State

Abstract

My research will focus on the contemporary anomalous Israeli policy concerning subsidizing the various fertility treatments by the state. For sociological, demographical, religious and security reasons the State of Israel invests a vast amount of money to develop and use the various fertility treatments. 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 a 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 will thus reconsider the legitimacy, efficiency and feasibility of the fertility treatments regulation, from the legal, medical 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. I will argue, inter alia, that contemporary Israeli policy should be carefully reconsidered as to whether it is reasonable 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.