In the Western world, the use of surrogacy services is becoming a way of bringing a child into the world, through a woman whose body is "leased" to another person or couple, from the time of birth to the birth. Those who help in this way bring children into the world are mainly barren women and gay men. Women who do not have a livelihood usually provide surrogacy for a living.

In Israel, surrogacy services are only allowed for married women who cannot conceive for medical reasons. The amendment to the surrogacy law in 2018 states that single women can also use these services. This amendment has sparked a backdrop of discrimination against other populations, particularly men who want to raise children as single parents or as part of homosexual relationships.

Following a petition filed by the High Court against the Health Ministry's policy, the court ruled last Thursday, contrary to state and physician concerns, that the surrogacy resource should also be made available to men, couples and individuals, not on medical grounds.

When it comes to logic, it's hard not to wonder why healthy women are being discriminated against. If the court releases prenuptial healthy men committed to their child's mother, why not release, in the name of gender equality, prenatal women from being bound to their biological watch, allowing them to freeze eggs in their youth and use the surrogate in adulthood?

Moreover, once surrogacy is permitted in Israel not only for medical reasons, the surrogacy industry will require thousands and perhaps thousands of women to meet the much-anticipated demand, which will also partly come from medical tourism. These women will be breastfeeding, pregnant, breastfeeding and pumping milk for the most of the price.

Who will they be? Certainly not the daughters and granddaughters of judges, women's doctors, surrogate agents or professors of gender and law ... Is it possible for the High Court method to corrupt Israeli society in the name of gender equality?

I propose to abolish the existing surrogacy law, and instead consider carrying the embryos as an organ donation to an animal patient, much like a kidney donation. Only women who need it medically should be allowed on a voluntary basis. The financial compensation will be paid for loss of working days, medical treatment and insurance.

The contract will not be signed between a "couple" and a surrogate, but between a woman with a medical problem and the surrogate. If gender equality in surrogacy is also needed for those who have no birth womb (in the politically incorrect age we called them "men"), this will allow disabled and chronically ill men who have a family back and the ability to raise a child with their family.

This is an opportunity for Israeli law to also solve the problem of denial of parental identity from the sperm and egg banks. A court in Canada ruled in 2011 that giving birth to anonymous sperm and egg donations violates the children's right to know their family identity and health background. Why, then, is the right to genetic continuity given, in companies that encourage the use of reproductive technology, only to parents and not their children?

A possible solution is to receive identified, non-anonymous, donated sperm and egg donations, collaborating and building a family as a continuation to them, with their families. This is how we will respond to the people, including women and children, of their dignity being trampled by the High Court.

Dr. Einat Ramon is Senior Lecturer in Women's Studies at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies