Scarce Medical Resources – Parenthood at Every Age, in Every Case and subsidized by the State?

תקציר

The dilemma of scarce medical resources is deeply rooted in the ancient mankind history, but it has been accelerated in the modern era with the appearance of the bio-medical innovations. This acute dilemma is relevant to all the western developed states, include Israel. Nevertheless, in one field there is the notion that Israel has unlimited medical resources – the fulfillment of its citizen's procreation and parenthood rights. Thus, for sociological, demographical, religious and security reasons the State of Israel invests a vast amount of money to develop and use the various fertility treatments. Israel, today, has the highest per capita consumption rate of infertility therapy, with In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) the most prevalent. This situation is sustained by a uniquely generous public health policy that poses hardly any restrictions on the eligibility of Israel’s citizens for infertility treatments within the National Health Insurance (NHI) system. The situation recently worsened when the Israeli Knesset passed the 2010 Eggs Donation Law that extends the eligibility limitation on the age of the mother from 51 to 54 and even covers all the expenses in some incidents of egg donation by the State of Israel. In this research I examine the basic theme weather there is any governmental obligation to subsidize the fulfillment of Israeli citizen's procreation and parenthood rights in expense of subsidizing other life saving treatments and medications. I explore the limits of this governmental obligation as far as it is exist at all. Further, I examine the legal regulation of this fertility treatments' governmental subsidizing, I enumerate its pitfalls, inter alia, due to those procedures inherent health hazards and following various ethical and legal justifications. Finally, I suggest ethical-legal criteria for restricting the age of the eligible woman who asks to use IVF and to receive in addition this state monetary assistance. In the conclusion of my research I suggest a new proposal: establishing a national procreation authority which will coherently and more narrowly determine that it is no more reasonable to invest huge amounts of money in an almost futile effort to encourage giving birth at every age, at any price especially when it is subsidized by the state.