Under What Circumstances Families of Fallen Soldiers Can Benefit from Surrogacy Services for the 2nd Time: Proposal

The government today expanded the framework for reimbursing the costs incurred by families of fallen soldiers for acquiring donor egg cells and utilizing surrogacy services.

According to the existing regulations, 100% of the contractual fee is reimbursed to the beneficiary parents for using surrogate motherhood services, but not exceeding 5.5 million drams. Expenses for donor egg cells are reimbursed to the payee—beneficiary parents or medical organizations—up to the actual expense, but not exceeding 600,000 drams.

Moreover, it is stipulated that reimbursement is provided to the beneficiary parents for costs related to acquiring donor egg cells a maximum of two times, while costs associated with surrogacy services are covered only once. This means that regardless of the number of fallen soldiers in the same family, beneficiary parents can receive reimbursement for the costs associated with acquiring donor egg cells up to two times, and for surrogacy services only once.

The new amendment proposes that support will be granted for each fallen soldier individually. Therefore, if there are two fallen soldiers in a family, they can benefit from the state program twice (four times for acquiring donor egg cells and two times for surrogacy services).

Currently, two families have already verbally applied for a second use of these services but were denied. Now, an opportunity is created for their applications to be approved.

If the proposal is adopted, an additional financial requirement of 13.4 million drams will arise. (2 beneficiaries x 600,000 drams x 2 attempts = 2,400,000 drams for reimbursement of costs associated with acquiring donor egg cells, and 2 x 5,500,000 drams = 11,000,000 drams for reimbursement of costs for utilizing surrogacy services.)