MK reveals she is pregnant with child of gay friend

Knesset member Meirav Ben-Ari of the Kulanu party revealed that she is pregnant with the child of a gay friend with whom she plans to start a family.

Ben-Ari, 40, announced her pregnancy in an extensive interview with the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper ahead of the Jewish New Year, saying that she was aware that as a single woman, rumors would quickly spread about her personal life.

“I don’t want to set off a rumor mill, with people wondering how a single woman at the Knesset is suddenly pregnant. So I’m saying it out right: I’m pregnant and everything’s alright,” Ben-Ari said. “I’m not the first MK to get pregnant, but I am the first single MK to get pregnant by a gay friend without getting married.”

Elected to the Knesset in 2015, Ben-Ari says that she “always felt that a career comes at the expense of a relationship,” but that a recent conversation with her mother made her realize that she wanted to have a family and now was the time.

“I really believe in love, I want a relationship. I didn’t want to keep waiting because of my biological clock, but I still await the day when I meet a partner with whom I can create a home.”

She said she brought up the idea with a close friend, Ofir, “a wise, gay man with a great deal of spirit.”

“I told him, ‘Let’s have a kid and raise him,’ and Ofir said yes,” she said.

Ben-Ari first entered the public spotlight in 2005 as the winner of the reality show “Needed: A leader.” With the NIS 5 million in prize money, she helped to set up a chain of at-risk youth centers in Netanya and Herzliya, which she ran before being elected to Tel Aviv city council in 2013. In 2015, she joined the centrist Kulanu party and was elected to the Knesset.

As part of a recent report claiming nearly 90 percent of female Knesset members have been sexually harassed, Ben-Ari told Channel 2 of her experience as an unmarried MK. “The fact that I’m a single woman in the Knesset sometimes puts me in an uncomfortable situation,” she said. “There was a situation [with someone] at the Knesset just recently, and I resolved it. I don’t want to divulge the name [of the harasser] because then everyone will know.”

Ben-Ari says she hopes her story will encourage other women to follow her decision.

“I’m coming out with all this to inspire and give courage to other women, to give them the strength not to give up on their right to have children, even if they don’t have a partner.”