Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Workers Across Israel Given Day Off To Protest New Anti-LGBT Surrogacy Law

There will be strikes across Israel on Sunday to protest a new law that excludes LGBT couples from state-supported surrogate pregnancies, Quartz reported.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu swooped in with a last-minute vote Wednesday, rejecting an amendment to an existing law that allowed only heterosexual married couples to qualify for government-funded surrogacy under Israel’s national health care system. The new law expanded eligibility to single women, but not single men. Israel does not yet recognize same-sex marriage, so the change effectively rules out surrogacy for gay and lesbian couples.

The new law spurred immediate public protests from Israel’s activist community, along with condemnation from private sector companies, particularly from the country’s many high-tech firms.

Dozens of major Israeli companies — along with large multinationals ranging from IBM and Microsoft to PayPal and Novartis — are planning to help the cause, offering a paid day off to employees joining Sunday’s protests. Other firms, like airline Israir, will allow their employees to wear black instead of their usual uniforms on Sunday as a sign of protest.

Microsoft, meanwhile, said that it will provide about $16,500 to any Israeli employee seeking to start families via surrogacy, regardless of sexual orientation, gender or marital status.

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.