Controversial bioethics law under discussion in France

"We are finally here", said French Minister of Health Olivier Véran at the opening of the third reading of the bioethics law on Monday. "The French family is growing in the diversity of its models", the Minister continued.

According to the French Christian radio broadcaster RCF, the primary debate is about two controversial measures, the extension of the assistive reproductive technology to single women or lesbian couples and the possibility of creating chimeric animal-human embryos. For the majority, it is about a bill of equality that will secure "all kinds of families" without "discrimination" and will allow scientific advances. Opponents believe, on the contrary, that the bill crosses red lines and that the law must allow the establishment of safeguards.

Right now, lesbian couples can't have a baby in France through assistive reproductive technology. They have to go to other countries like Belgium or Denmark to get access to assistive reproductive technology. The National Assembly is debating this issue because of the incoming revision of the French bioethics law. By law, the French Parliament has to revise the bioethics law every seven years.

Weapon

A few deputies from the liberal-conservative party Les Républicans (LR) oppose the new bill. Their primary weapon is their right of amendment, allowing a parliamentarian to propose changes to any legal text. Amendments can range from changing a word to deleting an entire article and multiply as many times as the chosen one considers it necessary.

Patrick Hetzel, LR deputy for Bas-Rhin, has tabled around a hundred amendments for the committee's examination of the bioethics bill and provides just as many for the examination in public session from June 7. After two readings of the text and several dozen hours of debate in three years, he still does not want the authorisation of medically assisted procreation.

"At some point, I think it's important that we make our voices heard. We are not on a consensus, and the majority must understand it," Hetzel explains to the French newspaper Le Monde. As LR leader on this new reading of the bioethics bill, he intends not to let anything go. "I blocked the two weeks in my diary," he warns.

"It's a major anthropological problem ", insists deputy Julien Ravier, also an LR member. He opposes "a society which decides through science to give birth to children without a father".

Petition

While the government wants to see the bioethics bill adopted before the summer, opponents of the text are launching a final offensive. A petition is online on the website of the National Assembly. It aims to demand the definition of the term "parents" in the civil code. This clarification would have the effect of making assisted reproduction impossible for all by stipulating that "parents" does not mean anything other than a father and a mother.

The extension of legal access to medically assisted procreation to lesbian couples and single women is a measure Emmanuel Macron mooted publicly during his 2017 presidential bid. In recent polling, 67 per cent of French people expressed their support for this extension. Thirty years earlier, in 1990, the support for this extension was just 24 per cent.