Israeli Youth Out Younger, Haredi Fertility Treatments
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Tel Aviv’s 11th annual municipality-funded Gay Pride Parade took place today. Timed to coincide with this, research was released showing that Israeli homosexuals are coming out of the closet younger. At the end of the 1990s the average age was 22; now it is 16.
The research was carried out by Guy Shilo, a recently-graduated PhD student at Tel Aviv University, and head of research at the movement, Israeli Gay Youth. He found that earlier sexual development among teenagers, both gay and straight, is one factor bringing the age down. Another is growing exposure to gay figures in the media.
Recently, the Bintel Blog reported on how young parenthood in the Haredi community meant that the leading rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliyashiv has just become a great great grandfather. Well now we have a contrasting story – also from the Haredi community.
A couple from Kfar Chabad, the Chabad-Lubavitch town not far from Tel Aviv, have been married for 40 years and have been trying to have a baby for much of that time. Eight months ago, a fertility treatment using an egg donation and in vitro fertilization finally worked and she became pregnant. She has just given birth at age 60 to a 4.29lbs baby. “I’ve waited for a baby for so long, I’m so happy,” she told Tel Aviv news outlet, Yedioth Ahronoth.
Staying on the topic of pregnancy, Ynet reports in this troubling article that employers are dismissing pregnant women and women undergoing fertility treatment as an easy way of saving costs in these though economic times.
(More photos after the jump)
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