A woman identified as A. has filed a seven million shekel lawsuit against the Health Ministry in the Nazareth District Court.
According to A., the State concealed from her for years the fact that she was born in 1995 through an egg donation that had been implanted in the womb of the woman who carried and raised her..
A. stated that the woman who gave birth to her raised her as her daughter together with her husband, but only a few years ago revealed to her that she was not her biological mother.
Following the discovery, A. has suffered from severe depression, and in 2021 the National Insurance Institute recognized her as having a significant disability.
The lawsuit is being supported by Michael Fuah, chairman of the “Choosing Family” movement, who described the case as “precedent-setting and moral.”
Fuah said: “When A. discovered that the woman who carried her was not her biological mother, it created a black hole in her identity, which she tried to fill through DNA tests to find her mother and possibly siblings. She did discover new details about her origins, but not the answers her soul was seeking. The realization that there is a woman in the world who gave her up in exchange for money or for another reason, and that she might form a romantic relationship with one of her siblings without knowing it at all, along with the sense of abandonment and deceit orchestrated by the State, shattered her world. Since then, she has been suffering from depression, which has been recognized by the National Insurance Institute.”
He added: “The desire for parenthood is an important and worthy desire, but it must not come at the expense of the children. Creating orphans at birth-children who are lied to and denied knowledge of their parents and the story that brought them into the world, just to solve someone else’s distress, is neither moral nor legal. We helped A. prepare this lawsuit because we see it as an important precedent-setting case. The court will be asked to prove that it protects not only the rights of those who seek to experience parenthood, but also of the children created as a result of procedures which the State promoted without taking into consideration the significance for the children.”
Fuah concluded: “Every child has a basic right to know at least who their parents and relatives are, and the story that brought them into the world. When the State fails in its duty to protect these children, it must pay the price.”