The bioethics bill arrives on Tuesday in the right-wing Senate, which could unexpectedly validate this flagship provision of the text, two days after a new demonstration by opponents of the extension of the PMA for couples of women.
Adopted at first reading in mid-October in the National Assembly, the bioethics bill will be debated in the Senate until February 4. The project will then go back to second reading before the deputies.
Green light for LDCs for all
As in the National Assembly, the debates promise to be passionate about a text which aims to revise the framework of the law to take into account scientific, technological, but also societal developments, while respecting ethical principles. The President of the Senate Gérard Larcher (LR), who will chair the opening of the session Tuesday afternoon, intends to facilitate "mutual listening" and guarantee a "quality" debate. Some 280 amendments were tabled, almost 10 times less than at the Assembly. One of the four co-rapporteurs of the special committee set up to examine the text, Olivier Henno (centrist), sees it as "a sign of good health in the Senate".
An emblematic measure, the opening of medically assisted procreation (PMA) to couples of women and single women received the first green light from senators in committee. On the initiative of co-rapporteur LR Muriel Jourda, opposed to the extension of the PMA, the senators nevertheless reserved its coverage by health insurance to requests based on a medical criterion. The PMA for all must now be voted in the hemicycle and the result looks tight. "A fight is brewing," predicts socialist leader Patrick Kanner, while the left is overwhelmingly in favor of the measure.
For LR, the law "abuses the law of parentage"
Part of the right - about two-thirds of the group Les Républicains according to its president Bruno Retailleau - is fundamentally opposed to it. Opponents of the "fatherless" PMA recalled their fond memories by parading in the street on Sunday in Paris, at the call of a group of 22 associations, including La Manif pour tous. The freedom to vote is traditionally on the subjects that touch on the intimate, and the personal positions go beyond the partisan divisions, overturning the arithmetic logic.
Arising from the opening of the PMA to lesbian couples, the reform of parentage is also likely to be hotly debated. It is only with one vote that the senators gave the green light in committee to the new mode of filiation which allows the woman who did not carry the baby to be recognized as one of two parents, with equality with his partner. For Muriel Jourda, not only the text "is not in the interest of the child", but "in addition it mistreats the law of descent". “The conclusions of the commission are in no way a position of balance. They cannot satisfy the majority of the group, ”says Bruno Retailleau.
A text "in accordance with French ethics"
On the scientific side, the senators even went a little further than the National Assembly, for example by increasing from 14 to 21 days the culture of embryos within the framework of research protocols. They also authorized, under conditions, genetic tests for genealogical purposes, or even enlarged, on an experimental basis and in a strictly supervised manner, the use of pre-implantation diagnosis for chromosomal abnormalities.
For Olivier Henno, the text released by the commission is "in accordance with French ethics, it humanizes research, the evolutions of society, but it is not the fear of the future". General delegate of the Alliance Vita association, Tugdual Derville said he hoped that senators "will have more prudence and wisdom" in the hemicycle than in committee.
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