The Ministry of Health published this morning (Wednesday) for public comment precedent regulations establishing a mechanism whereby women who are divorced and refused a divorce can undergo fertility treatments at their request even without permission from the absent husband or the divorce refuser.
Today, unmarried women and those who refuse to get a divorce cannot undergo fertility treatments as long as the husband refuses to approve it.
According to the new regulations, these women will present confirmation of their marriage through a judgment or request for a divorce after 18 months, and will be able to conceive through sperm donation and fertility treatments.
The health institutions will no longer require the consent of the absent or refusing husband in order to approve the procedure and will treat these women as single.
The regulations were published today for public comment and will then be approved by the Knesset's Health Committee.
Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz: "Parenthood is a basic matter. I am working to enable anyone who wants to exercise their right to parenthood - to do so. If a woman wants to undergo fertility treatments, then as in any medical matter, the only consideration that the health system must take into account is the professional health consideration. Denying women rights, oppressing them, blackmailing them, or taking revenge on them should not be agreed to just because they chose to divorce or the husband chose to disappear. Non-medical considerations are not relevant to the ministry's guidelines and we must remove them."
Attorney Irit Rosenblum, founder of the "New Family" organization: "Health Minister Horowitz's decision to allow fertility treatments for women who are divorced and refuse to divorce is a welcome step in the right direction, but the road to full equality is still long.
The time has come for us to remove from the lexicon the terms "aguna" and "divorce refusal", which are reminders of an old and primitive world that saw the woman as her husband's property.
The right to divorce should not depend on the good will of an abusive man, and until this is corrected, we will need more and more band-aids, such as the important decision of the Minister of Health, which turns a bad reality into something less bad."
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