“For over a year, the state has done nothing to promote appropriate legislative amendment, and therefore the court has ruled that the continuing serious violation of human rights caused as a result of the existing surrogacy arrangement cannot be remedied and operative relief must be granted to petitioners,” the Court ruling states.
Last year, a partial Supreme Court ruling established that the current laws regarding surrogacy are unconstitutional, and granted the government a twelve-month period to advance an amendment that “expresses a commitment to the right to equality and parenthood of single men and same-sex couples.”
The judges unanimously decided that “the sweeping exclusion of the category of homosexual men from the primacy of the surrogacy is presumed to be a 'suspicious' discrimination, which attributes inferior status to this group, thereby imposing further severe degradation of human dignity on the basis of gender or sexual orientation.”
At the conclusion of the twelve-month period allotted, the government requested an extension, given the complexity of the issue – which was granted. However, last week, the government informed the Supreme Court that given the political situation, there is currently no practical possibility of advancing a Surrogacy Law to the Court’s satisfaction.
In a letter to the court, the State requested that the Supreme Court rule on the matter in accordance with an attached statement on the Health Minister’s stance. READ MORE
