Paris (AFP)

Barely retumed in committee, the post-mortem PMA, with the gametes of a deceased spouse, is debated Thursday in the Assembly. The measure does not appear in the bill bioethics, but several members are in favor, including the majority. Update on this debate

. What is post-mortem PMA?

Forbidden in France, medically assisted procreation post-mortem is authorized in about twenty countries, according to the Biomedicine Agency, particularly in Belgium, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, as well as in the United States. in Israel.

It consists of performing a PMA after the death of the spouse, either via artificial insemination with frozen sperm or via in vitro fertilization (IVF) by implanting an embryo conceived with the couple's gametes and frozen before the death of the man. .

. What do the specialists say?

Doctors and psychiatrists are divided. Opposed to the insemination of sperm post-mortem, the National Consultative Ethics Committee (CCNE) on the other hand is favorable to the implantation of embryos after a death, because the parental project is already committed. It sets conditions, including prior consent of the man during his lifetime and supervision in time after death.

On the same line, the gynecologist Israel Nisand supports the implantation of post-mortem embryos. "For the few cases a year that will come (a dozen a priori), we would allow France not to give obscene answers" to these women, by destroying their embryos or giving them to others, esteem- there.

Some psychiatrists are opposed to the PMA post-mortem as Pierre Levy-Soussan, auditioned in committee: "The difference between the dead and the living will no longer play (...) It is the child who pays the price of this sacrifice- there, science is not there to solve the existential problems of adults ". The psychologist Michèle Vitry fears "an idealized ghost father" by the mother, which will "complicate the process of psychic structuring" of the child.

. What does the government say?

Health Minister Agnès Buzyn is not in favor. "There are a number of risks to the construction of the child," she says. The "weight of grief" creates a situation "obviously" different from that of a single woman desiring to do a PMA through the sperm of an anonymous donor. And "there could be a form of transfer from the paternal image to the child".

Legally, this also poses a "real problem" in matters of succession, she warns, "because you have to stop a succession based on frozen spermatozoa".

. Who is for the assembly and why?

Twenty amendments were tabled by MPs in favor of the post-mortem PMA, from the majority, France Insoumise, socialists, and even, for an amendment, Republicans.

Etslande, especially theenciesiences, see-it -landeilingo-rbb, Sell-the -encies, find to make it a lot easier to parking women with Lesotho. This would be tantamount to allowing a widow to use the gametes of an anonymous donor, but to refuse her frozen ones from her deceased spouse.

They rely on a judgment of October 2016 of the Administrative Court of Rennes, which had acceded to the request of a Frenchwoman wanting to export abroad the gametes of her deceased husband for insemination. And on a May 2016 decision of the Council of State authorizing for the first time a Spanish widow to transfer sperm from her husband to Spain, in view of an LDC.

. Who is against and why?

The "walkers" are very divided. In the group, voices warned in committee against the birth of "orphaned children", and the risk of "pressure" on "the bereaved woman".

Many elected LR are also opposed. "Do not play sorcerer apprentices," argues Annie Genevard.

Communists are "pretty reserved", wondering if this is not "a somewhat exorbitant extension of human capabilities".

The post-mortem PMA has been rejected at every revision of bioethics laws over the last twenty years.

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