With 67% of French people now in favor of assisted reproduction for all, according to a recent Ifop survey for the association of homoparental families, the bioethics bill and its flagship measure to open up assisted reproduction to all women must therefore finally be adopted by Parliament on Tuesday for implementation in the coming weeks. The epilogue of two years of work, interspersed with passes of arms and demonstrations.
The implementing texts of the law were prepared so “that the first children can be conceived before the end of the year 2021”, promised the Minister of Health Olivier Véran. The extension of medically assisted procreation to female couples and single women has been awaited for years by LGBT associations in particular. It’s “nine years of gestation and a painful birth,” according to Inter-LGBT. Mentioned by François Hollande, then promised by Emmanuel Macron, the first, and probably the only major social reform of the five-year term, has fallen behind schedule in particular because of the Covid-19 crisis, causing some to “lose” the chances of pregnancy, deplore these associations.
Conversely, the Manif pour tous denounces “a passage in force” with the “systematic” refusal of “any modification of the initial project”. With other associations and the support of the Catholic episcopate, the movement has mobilized over the months tens of thousands of people against “the PMA without father”.
Several bioethics topics
Without fanfare, the National Assembly, which has the last word, will vote in a final vote Tuesday at the end of the day on this vast text which also provides for a delicate reform of filiation and access to origins, and tackles a number of complex subjects such as the self-preservation of oocytes or research on embryonic stem cells.
If the debates were bitter, the PMA for all, reimbursed by Social Security, did not ignite society, unlike gay marriage under François Hollande. “We have advanced methodically, without bulging the torso on this question of enlarging women’s rights”, argues the leader of LREM Aurore Bergé, who recalls the states general of bioethics and the opinion in particular of the National Consultative Committee ethics that paved the way.
Globally divided parliamentarians
The bill began its parliamentary course in the fall of 2019. Initially, the Senate dominated by the right had voted with its measure of enlargement of the PMA, however excluding support by Social Security . But at second reading, the senators adopted in confusion the amputated text of this emblematic measure. Deputies and senators then did not find a compromise.
During a final examination on Thursday, the senators rejected the bill out of hand, the rapporteur Muriel Jourda (LR) again deploring a “mixture of genres” between provisions “which fall under bioethics and other provisions which are societal ”. The PMA “split our debates” and “the government created the conditions for failure”, added Bernard Jomier (PS group), co-rapporteur.
Surrogacy, an “impassable red line” in France
On all of these often complex and intimate subjects, the freedom to vote is essential. And all the political groups were divided, at the Palais du Luxembourg as at the Palais Bourbon, even if the left voted mostly for, and the right against.
With thousands of amendments, the LR pillars in the Assembly Xavier Breton, Patrick Hetzel and even Annie Genevard warned against a society guided by “individual desire”, without consideration for “the best interests of the child ”. By putting the subject back on the agenda in recent months, “the executive has shown a catastrophic lack of sense of priorities” in the face of the health crisis, they pointed out, suggesting instead “a real democratic debate in 2022 “. According to them, assisted reproduction for all women will inevitably lead to surrogacy (surrogacy) in the name of equality, in favor of men.
The bill makes it possible to recognize under conditions the filiation of children born to surrogacy abroad, while in France it remains an “insurmountable red line”, hammered the Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti.