French Parliament adopts bioethics law and opens assisted reproduction to all women

Published on : 06/29/2021 – 6:43 PM

The National Assembly definitively adopted, Tuesday, June 29, the bioethics law, whose flagship measure is the opening of medically assisted procreation (MAP) to all women (lesbian couples and single women), despite the opposition of the right and Catholics.

In France, the right to assisted reproduction was until now limited to heterosexual couples suffering from fertility problems, which pushed lesbian or single women wishing to resort to it to go to a foreign country where it is legal, such as Belgium or Spain.

The widely adopted law extends to all women the possibility of using medically assisted procreation up to the age of 43 to fulfill a “parental plan”.

>> To see, our Focus: “PMA of single women: they had a baby on their own”

“This access cannot be the subject of any difference of treatment, in particular with regard to the marital status or the sexual orientation of the applicants”, specifies the text voted by the deputies, which maintains on the other hand the prohibition of the gestation for others (surrogacy).

The National Assembly, which adopted the text at first reading in August 2020, reversed the version modified by the Senate, where the right-wing majority had introduced an amendment limiting reimbursement by Social Security to only LDCs of “medical nature. “, therefore to heterosexual couples, in order to reduce the scope of this emblematic measure.

The deputies adopted the final version of the text by 326 votes to 115.

“This new law is a balanced, ambitious and responsible text”, commented the Secretary of State in charge of the protection of children and families, Adrien Taquet, during the presentation of the text.

“Granting new rights and new protections is the mark of a progressivism which has kept the meaning of the conquests”, he added of the law which featured prominently in the demands of the March. LGBT + pride on Saturday between Pantin and Paris.

>> To read, our webdocumentary: “The black market in sperm: how the law on assisted reproduction can change the situation”

To respect the right of each child to know his biological father, the new law allows any person conceived by PMA thanks to a sperm donation to access “if they wish, at their majority, to the identity and to the data not identifiers of the third party donor “.

It also deals with other bioethical subjects which have gone largely unnoticed in the public debate, such as the self-preservation of oocytes or the donation of gametes.

In a column published Tuesday in the newspaper Le Monde, philosophers, including the MEP François-Xavier Bellamy, former leader of the right in the European elections and figure of the opposition of part of the Catholic community to the law on the “marriage for all” adopted in 2013, regret that the opening of the PMA has “monopolized the attention”.

“The seriousness of what is playing out today remains essentially underestimated”, they warn by denouncing the door open, according to them, by this law to “human-animal chimeras”, “transgenic embryos” or “babies -medicines “.

With Reuters