Techno-natalism in Israel

Reprotech now enables over 5% of births in the Jewish State and is rooting out genetic diseases.

Written by Craig Willy.

The rise of reproductive technologies (reprotechnologies) is ushering in a new phase in humanity’s evolutionary history. IVF, embryo screening, and other procedures are enabling more people to have children and even shape their genetic characteristics, most notably by selecting against congenital diseases. Israel, with its embrace of both IVF and genetic screening, has emerged as the world’s premier techno-natalist nation. With adoption and development of reprotech likely to continue upward this century, Israel may offer us some ideas of the shape of things to come more broadly.

The Jewish State is unique in the developed world both for its fertility rate, of around 2.9 children per woman, and its embrace of reprogenetics. Today, IVF enables over 5% of births in Israel and with genetic screening has led to a significant reduction in the prevalence of genetic diseases among newborns. As so much of the world struggles with ultra-low fertility, the Israelis’ natalist success is worth exploring.

“Go forth and multiply”: Israel’s pronatalist consensus

Techno-natalism, the promotion and use of reprogenetic technologies to raise the birth rate and shape the genetic character of future children, has deep ideological and even religious roots in Israel.

Zionist leaders have been pronatalist since even before the founding of the State in 1948. David Ben-Gurion, the de facto Jewish leader in British Palestine in the 1930s and the first prime minister of Israel from 1948 to 1963, did more than perhaps any other to establish the foundations of Israeli pronatalism. Indeed, Ben-Gurion is known as a “godfather of fertility” in Israel.

In colonial Palestine, Ben-Gurion sought to increase the Jewish birth rate to keep up with high Arab fertility and ultimately to create, in combination with Jewish immigration, a Jewish majority in preparation for a State of Israel. Once Israel was created in 1948, Prime Minister Ben-Gurion continued to support pronatalism to ensure the security and stability of the Jewish State in the face of a hostile Arab world, repeatedly calling on Jewish mothers to have at least four children. In his memoirs, Ben-Gurion wrote:

If the Jewish birthrate is not increased, it is doubtful that the Jewish State will survive … Any Jewish woman who, as far as it depends on her, does not bring into the world at least four healthy children is shirking her duty to the nation, like a soldier who evades military service.

Ben-Gurion’s practical measures were limited to a prize granted to mothers of ten children or more. However, his concerns were also reflected among Israel doctors, demographers, and intellectuals – and independent Israel gradually developed a hegemonic family-friendly culture.

Israeli pronatalism has been facilitated by the religious and historical context. God’s first commandment in Genesis to “be fruitful and multiply” is taken seriously by religious Jews. The extermination of most of European Jewry in the holocaust reinforced the sense among Jews worldwide, and particularly in Israel, of the urgency of reproduction to preserve their people and pass on their heritage.

It does not seem that family policies have been the decisive factor in Israel’s exceptionally high fertility for a developed country. Family allowance for each child varies from 169 to 214 shekels per month (about US $45-57), which is low given the country’s cost of living. Mothers are entitled to 15 weeks of paid maternity leave and may take another 11 weeks unpaid. This is not very generous. Women make up 47% of employees and, significantly, becoming a mother has almost no effect on the employment rate of women aged 25-44, especially among the highly educated.

As more and more observers are arguing, societal culture and not policy appears to be the decisive factor in fertility trends. Israeli society is intensely familial. Because it is a small country, relatives are usually nearby to help with children, and there is societal messaging to the effect that Israel is a single body, repeatedly under threat from the Arabs. Having children is considered a blessing and a prerequisite for collective survival. Haifa University sociologist Daphne Birenbaum-Carmeli argues that “Israel cultivates this notion of a tribe, of bio-connectivity. The whole issue of fertility and infertility is connected with nationalism.”

Access to abortion and routinization of IVF: Israel’s embrace of reprotechnological choice

In the field of reproductive technology, the combination of Israel’s Jewish heritage, pronatalism, and liberalism has culminated in the expansion of individual reproductive choice.

Unlike many religious and natalist movements, Israeli natalism does not feature strong restrictions on abortion. While women wishing to have an abortion must request this before an ad hoc committee, 99% of these requests are accepted. This contrasts with the heavy-handed or even brutal approach of some natalist policymakers, who seek to increase the birthrate by banning abortion. The most notorious case is communist Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Decree 770. This sharply restricted abortion, leading to more children in orphanages and a very temporary uptick in the birthrate.

Jewish religious authorities are pronatalist and support use of reprotech. According to the Talmud, the soul does not enter the embryo until 40 days after conception, meaning that the discarding of embryos in the context of IVF and/or preimplantation genetic diagnosis is licit. Indeed, to “be fruitful and multiply” a religious Jew may be morally required to use IVF.

When Israel’s first IVF baby, the world’s fifth, was born in 1982, the practice was praised by politicians, service providers, rabbis, doctors, feminists, and laypeople. Unlike in the West, demography-related ecological concerns are completely absent from Israeli reproductive discourse.

IVF has been state-funded in Israel since 1981. IVF units have opened in most Israeli hospitals and Israeli women have embraced the practice, undergoing more IVF cycles than any other country. Israeli women aged 18-45 are entitled to funding for unlimited IVF rounds up to the birth of two live children. IVF expenditure accounts for at least 2% of Israel’s health budget. As of 2014, Israeli women underwent twice as many IVF cycles as Danish women, the next most popular consumers of IVF (and over ten times more than American women).

IVF in Israel is routinely used to treat male or female infertility. By 2019, 5% of all live births in Israel were IVF-assisted.

Israeli women also have access to most of the latest reprotechnologies. Gamete donation, freezing, and banking, embryo freezing, surrogacy, and preimplantation genetic diagnosis, are all practiced legally. Reprotech has tremendously expanded the reproductive freedom of Israeli men and women beyond the traditional category of naturally fertile premenopausal heterosexual couples. One third of IVF treatments in Israel are delivered to women over 40 and there was even a case of a 60-year-old Israeli woman successfully giving birth thanks to IVF.

There are some limitations on reprotech in Israel. Surrogacy is extremely expensive. Sex selection is only allowed under some circumstances. Posthumous reproduction is limited but the State actively supports retrieval, preservation, and use of fallen soldiers’ sperm.

Israeli reprogenetics: a widespread concern for preventing genetic diseases

Israelis largely embrace reprogenetics, that is, genetic counseling and the use of monogenic testing to prevent the passing on of heritable diseases to the next generations. Given Jewish populations’ small size and long history of endogamy, they have high rates of various genetic diseases.

Genetic counseling services are available in almost all major hospitals. The State provides free genetic testing to couples depending on their ethno-genetic background, such as for cystic fibrosis for most Jews, Tay Sachs Disease for Ashkenazi (Central European) Jews, and Thalassemia for Mizrahi (Middle-Eastern) Jews. One study found that carrier screening has led to a 57% reduction in the number of patients born with spinal muscular atrophy, as well as low rates of other genetic diseases. While polygenic screening is currently illegal in Israel, legalization is being debated.

It is very apparent that Israeli attitudes towards reprogenetics differ markedly from those of many other nations, notably in Europe. One study of first year Israeli medical students found that 96% supported screening prospective parents for reproductive risks, as against less than 40% of Croatian students. Another study found that Jewish Israelis have a more positive attitude towards reprogenetic testing than do Arab Israelis.

Perhaps most striking, however, is a study contrasting the attitudes of German and Israeli genetic counselors. Many in Germany considered reproductive genetic screening as a kind of discrimination against the disabled, with one scholar concluding:

Being suspicious of everything in repro-genetics as “new eugenics” leads many German professionals (as well as the German state itself) to declarative positions that seem to verge on what the respondents perceived as hypocrisy, and to problematic regulations which ban and reject potentially beneficial genetic tests such as population screening or PGD [preimplantation genetic diagnosis of diseases].

Israeli counselors largely rejected the relevance of Nazi eugenics to contemporary repro-genetics and overlooked the wide-ranging ethical debate in Germany and elsewhere. Many Israeli counselors espoused, on the one hand, a liberal ethos of individual choice and market forces, while on the other hand claiming that it is socially irresponsible to knowingly give birth to an infant with a serious genetic disorder.

It is striking how two peoples could draw such diametrically opposed lessons from the Nazi experience. These differences in attitudes coincide with significant legal and practical differences in reprogenetics. Whereas Israel allows preimplantation genetic diagnosis for less severe diseases, in Germany this is only allowed for life-threatening ones.

Global prospects for techno-natalism

Israel is in many respects a unique case. No other country combines a strong biotech/reprotech sector, a pro-natalist and reprotech-friendly religion, and a pro-natalist societal consensus formed around reaction to genocide and hostile neighbors. Nonetheless, Israel is hardly alone in seeking to increase its birth rate. Indeed, in our age of ultra-low fertility, more and more nations are supporting reprotech to boost the birth rate, including France, Taiwan, and China.

Given the limits of environmental interventions and the debilitating effects of ultra-low fertility on national vitality, we would do well to invest in access to emerging reprogenetic technologies and to protect reproductive freedom. Israel shows that such approaches can significantly increase the birth rate and improve genetic health. Yet the potential future impact of reprotech may be much greater still.

While the share of technologically assisted births is currently low, it is sure to increase over time. There may be a tipping point towards mass adoption of reprotech with certain breakthroughs facilitating uptake, such as artificial wombs. Reprotech’s genetic power will also increase as biotechnological interventions and our understanding of human genetics continue to improve.

If the right breakthroughs are made, the twenty-first century may well become the Century of Reprotech, marking a decisive shift in our evolutionary history. More people than ever before will be able to have children and those that do will have unprecedented scope to prevent genetic diseases and improve their offspring’s chances of human flourishing.

Craig Willy is an EU-US political writer, policy consultant, and the editor of the Genetic Choice Project. He writes on Substack.

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