Israel – Medical Experts Warn Ideology Could Eclipse Science Under New Far-right Health Committee Chair

Health professionals called for revoking MK Limor Son Har-Melech's appointment, warning that her positions on abortion, vaccines and the World Health Organization could dangerously influence policy at the key committee

Ido Efrati
December 23 2025

Israel's Knesset appointed far-right MK Limor Son Har-Melech as chair of the Health Committee on Monday, a move that has alarmed health experts who warn the role demands scientific leadership at a time of mounting pressure on the health system.

… [Hagai Levine] added that Son Har-Melech's conservative-messianic worldview is likely to shape the committee's agenda. "We are concerned she may push restrictions on abortion," in line with her other policies tied to gender segregation, Levine said.

https://archive.is/4CPCf
(https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-12-23/ty-article/.premium/doctors-warn-new-far-right-health-committee-chair-may-push-abortion-restrictions/0000019b)

23.12.2025

How Israel’s War in Gaza Ripped a Major Abortion Fund Apart

A nonprofit took a stand on Palestine. A senior employee resigned and published her account. Then the backlash started.

By Christina Cauterucci
Oct 14, 2024

It all started with an Instagram post. On a Monday in October 2023, Jade Hurley was looking for a way to acknowledge Indigenous Peoples Day, an alternative to Columbus Day celebrated by those who don’t consider the colonization of the Americas an occasion worth celebrating. As the communications manager at the D.C. Abortion Fund, Hurley was tasked with posting to the organization’s Instagram account, which has a modest audience of about 7,000 followers.

In DCAF’s Instagram Stories, which disappear after 24 hours, Hurley reposted another organization’s graphic, which asserted that the Indigenous peoples of Guam, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and Palestine are entitled to reclaim the land that colonizers stole from them or their ancestors.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/10/israel-gaza-palestine-abortion-fund-dc-tablet.html

14.10.2024

Commentary

Alisha Dingus

Allison Tombros Korman

Democrats Shouldn’t Isolate Abortion Access

Democratic leaders appear set on siloing abortion access from other critical issues—including the genocide in Gaza. That’s a mistake.

Anne Rumberger
August 19, 2024

About a thousand activists with the group Bodies Outside of Unjust Laws marched through downtown Chicago on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, chanting slogans like “One, two, three, four, fund abortions not war! Five, six, seven, eight, Israel is an apartheid state!”

Organizers designed the march, in part, to underscore to Democratic leaders — especially Vice President Kamala Harris — that they would do well to note the level of popular support for three key issues the party seems to have largely atomized: abortion access, queer rights and an end to the genocide in Gaza.

Continued: https://inthesetimes.com/article/democrats-abortion-gaza-genocide-queer-dnc

Biden’s Support For Israel Is Fracturing The Reproductive Rights Movement

Reproductive justice workers believe Biden is contributing to a maternal and reproductive health crisis in Gaza. They’re deeply frustrated with him and the big reproductive rights groups that are backing him.

By Alanna Vagianos
Feb 16, 2024

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris celebrated what would have been the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade in late January — their first campaign event of 2024. The “Restore Roe” rally in northern Virginia made it clear that the Biden/Harris ticket will center abortion rights in the reelection campaign. The theater was filled with the president’s supporters and leadership from national reproductive rights organizations who have endorsed him, including Planned Parenthood, the National Organization for Women and Reproductive Freedom for All.

Only a few minutes into Biden’s speech, several protesters interrupted, calling for a cease-fire in Israel’s U.S.-backed military operation in Gaza, which has killed more than 28,000 Palestinians and set off a maternal and reproductive health crisis.

Continued: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-israel-support-fractures-reproductive-rights-movement_n_65ce3765e4b04daca6961613

Israel readies for possibility of pregnancies in female hostages raped by Hamas

When the pregnancy is a result of a terrorist who previously murdered her relatives and brutally raped her, the emotional aftermath is unimaginable, leaving lasting psychological scars.

By DR. ITAY GAL
JANUARY 14, 2024

The Israeli medical community, usually reluctant to consider such scenarios, has recently actively been preparing for the appalling possibility of several female hostages who were raped in captivity and subsequently become pregnant.

According to sources who spoke with Maariv, there have been comprehensive discussions in hospitals across the country about preparing for the return of Israeli hostages who have been sexually assaulted by Hamas terrorists and are currently at different stages of pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-782096

14.01.2024

News

abortion and rape

Association of Public Health Physicians

Requests for abortions in Israel at record high, report says

Central Bureau of Statistics data show 99.5% of requests to terminate pregnancy approved in 2021; 50.1% of applications made by married women, 6.8% by women under 19

Nina Fox
Jan 17, 2023

Requests for abortions in Israel have reached a record high in 2021, says a new Central Bureau of Statistics report published Tuesday.

According to the report, the Health Ministry's pregnancy termination committee had received 16,591 requests to terminate pregnancies, meaning 7.7 out of every 1,000 Israeli women between the ages 15-49 had sought an abortion throughout the year, same as in 2020.

Continued: https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/r1115teesj

17.01.2023

Featured

News

abortion statistics

increase in abortion rates

Israel

Middle East

Health

American evangelicals open a new antiabortion front — in Israel

by Shira Rubin
November 18, 2022

JERUSALEM — In a country with one of the world’s most liberal abortion policies, groups funded by conservative American evangelicals are targeting women with a message familiar in the United States but novel to most Israelis: Abortion is “murder.”

The idea resonated with Shir Palla Shitrit, 21, when she first contacted the “pregnancy crisis center” run by Be’ad Chaim — Hebrew for “pro-life.” In an office decorated with fetus diagrams, framed biblical passages and a ceramic sculpture of a breastfeeding mother, counselors offered her a year’s worth of material support and a place in a growing grass-roots community.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/18/israel-abortion-roe-america-evangelicals/

Israel abortion reforms approved amid Roe v. Wade crisis

Israel's Labor, Welfare and Health Committee approved abortion reforms, which would allow women easier access to treatment.

By TAMAR URIEL-BEERI
JUNE 27, 2022

The Knesset Labor, Welfare and Health Committee on Monday approved abortion reforms in a preliminary reading after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

The amendment would allow women to apply online to get an abortion and to receive a pharmacological abortion in more accessible places.

Continued: https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/pregnancy-and-birth/article-710503

27.06.2022

pregnancy termination committee

The battle over Israel’s abortion laws explained

Possible overturning of landmark US case Roe vs Wade shines spotlight on abortion rights across the world

By SHIRA SILKOFF
MAY 28, 2022

The topic of abortion has been much discussed in recent weeks, following the leaking of a US Supreme Court draft indicating the court would vote in favor of overturning Roe vs Wade, the landmark ruling from 1973 that protected a person’s absolute right to an abortion from excessive government restrictions.

The news that the highest court in the US was working to remove these rights that have been enshrined for decades, at a time when other countries such as Northern Ireland and New Zealand have only recently legalized or decriminalized abortion, has sent many reeling and placed a sharp spotlight on abortion rights across the world.

Continued: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-707737

Israel’s health minister wants to make it easier to get abortions

By SHIRA HANAU/JTA
DECEMBER 3, 2021

As the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Washington on the most significant abortion case to reach the court in decades, Israel’s health minister laid out his plans to simplify what he called Israel’s “chauvinistic” abortion process on Wednesday.

“It should be a given — the rights to a woman’s body are the woman’s alone,” Nitzan Horowitz told the Israeli news site Ynet. “Any decision or medical procedure such as the choice of whether to perform an abortion must be in the hands of the woman. We have no moral right to decide for her how to deal with an unwanted pregnancy.”

Continued: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/israels-health-minister-wants-to-make-it-easier-to-get-abortions-687730

03.12.2021