Answer

Hello S.,
I’m familiar with the arguments and I don’t accept them.
The committee’s main rationale was to reduce as much as possible the number of surrogate mothers, out of concern for exploitation. I don’t have a principled problem with that consideration (although I’m not sure it’s correct, as I noted in the post. They have the right to make a living as they see fit). But I do have a problem with applying it to men. I don’t see a difference between a woman who cannot become pregnant and two gay men who cannot become pregnant. They also cannot have a child with a woman, because then the parents would not be a couple, so the pretense of distinguishing between the cases sounds to me like a cover for discrimination.
I assume that within the committee itself they also understood that an equal comparison between the populations was impossible because of political constraints, and under that assumption they chose the lesser evil: not to allow men to use surrogacy. But at the end of the day, that is discriminatory and unfair.
By the way, the data claiming that surrogate mothers are usually of a low educational and socioeconomic level is of course nonsense. I could have told you that in advance. Someone who has no livelihood turns to surrogacy. So what have you done now by preventing her from doing it? You’ve left her without an income instead of allowing her to earn a living as she sees fit. That is paternalism which, as usual, harms the very people it claims to protect.
Incidentally, in the Mor-Yosef Committee itself there was a minority proposal (including Steinberg and Halperin, the two religious guys) to allow voluntary surrogacy for everyone. That would reduce the number of surrogate mothers, prevent exploitation, and preserve equality. The proposal was rejected, and it’s not clear to me why. True, even there you would not be allowing those who want this as a livelihood to do so, but in any case that is a consideration that neither the committee nor the public really cares about.