Israeli journalist and former MK YInon Magal on Monday morning revealed that Meretz MKs Tamar Zandberg and Michal Rozin were absent during the 2014 vote on the Surrogacy Law initiated by Yesh Atid MK and then-Health Minister Yael German.
The law, which was approved in its first Knesset reading but was not advanced, aimed to allow surrogacy for single parents of both genders, as well as for homosexuals.
In addition to Zandberg and Rozin's absence, Zionist Union MKs Shelly Yachimovich and Micky Rosenthal, as well as then-Meretz MK Zehava Galon, abstained from the vote.
Rozin explained that her absence was not coincidental, and that she opposes the law for feminist reasons.
At the time, she told Haaretz that "despite the goodwill here, there's a huge issue with selling wombs. It's a type of organ trade."
"The women who will do this will be disadvantaged women who do it in order to earn a living. Women will always be the ones who pay the price and are at the bottom of the chain. Pregnancy and birth is very dangerous, and [women] sometimes pay a physical and mental price for it. It's not like a man donating sperm. There's a lot of work to be done on this law."
Attorney Michal Eden, who is a legal expert in matters regarding the LGBT community, also opposed the law in 2014.
"This proposal will close the option of using a surrogate," she said then. "Both in Israel, because of the small number of surrogates, and abroad, because of the law's unreasonable limitations."
In Eden's opinion, if the law passed, neither homosexual couples nor heterosexual couples would be able to use a surrogate. She therefore suggested to then-Health Minister German, who proposed the bill, to "omit from the proposal the part that would cause surrogacy to fail abroad, and make do with recognition of homos' (sic) right to undergo surrogacy in Israel."