Paris (AFP)

The Senate with a right-wing majority begins Tuesday the examination of the bioethics bill: after a large demonstration against PMA for all women, the debates promise to be fed on this flagship measure, but also on the question of parentage or the research field.

After the National Assembly, which adopted it at first reading in mid-October, the Senate will debate until February 4 the text to revise the bioethics laws, the third of its kind, as an extension of the laws of 2004 and 2011. The project will then go back to second reading before the deputies.

Three ministers, Agnès Buzyn (Health), Nicole Belloubet (Justice) and Frédérique Vidal (Research) will speak to defend a text which aims to adapt the framework of the law to take into account scientific and medical developments, technological, but also societal, while respecting ethical principles.

In addition to the four co-rapporteurs, 16 senators are included in the general discussion, reflecting the diversity of positions, which go beyond the usual political divisions.

"It is a text which needs to take time", estimates the president of the Senate Gérard Larcher (LR). "We are in an assembly very attentive to the human question, and we cannot treat it in a way that would be approximate".

Sunday, the day before this new stage of the text in Parliament, tens of thousands of opponents marched in Paris "against the PMA without father, Trojan horse of the GPA".

The organizers called rallies in front of the Luxembourg Palace on Tuesday and Wednesday evening, while the president of the Manif pour tous, Ludivine de la Rochère urged the senators to "resist the progressives".

Emmanuel Macron's campaign promise, the opening of medically assisted procreation (PMA) to couples of women and single women, divides the senatorial right.

Senators leader LR Bruno Retailleau is resolutely opposed to it, as is co-rapporteur Muriel Jourda. Conversely, the president of the special commission set up to examine the text, Alain Milon, is not only favorable to the extension of PMA, but also to the legalization of surrogacy (gestation for others, better known by the term of "surrogate mothers"). As for President Larcher, he is "fairly open" to an extension of the PMA, but under conditions.

- A "precursor" Senate -

In committee, after a long debate, the senators gave the first green light to the opening of PMA to all women, while reserving its coverage by health insurance to requests based on a medical criterion .

In the hemicycle, the battle promises to be tough, and the result tight.

Opponents of the opening of the PMA will also fight the reform of the parentage associated with it. 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.

The right also intends to launch the debate on surrogacy, through the question of the recognition of children born abroad for this procedure, which is prohibited in France. In committee, the senators excluded, on the initiative of Mr. Retailleau, the transcription in the civil status of birth certificates mentioning two fathers or, as mother, a woman other than that having given birth.

Many other complex subjects will animate the hemicycle, be it access to origins or self-preservation of oocytes, or research on embryonic stem cells.

In committee, senators sometimes went a little further than the Assembly. They 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.

"The Senate is always a little precursor in societal matters", advances the leader of the centrist senators Hervé Marseille, while the general delegate of the Alliance Vita association, Tugdual Derville, criticizes "excesses added to the text of the deputies".

© 2020 AFP