The sensitive bioethics bill which opens up medically assisted procreation (MAP) to all women will be submitted for debate in the National Assembly. With some 2,300 amendments on the menu for the whole week and new ministers at the front, it is the last text of this summer session, with a scheduled legislative time of 25 hours, which can in fact double.  

The kick-off will be given at the end of the day. "It's going to be a little more rock'n'roll than at first reading. How many will there be in the hemicycle, about fifty?" Asks a manager, worried about the votes. "The game is going to be played out", on the other hand welcomes Guillaume Chiche, a former "walker".  

A project "neither left nor right" 

Pressed by associations and part of the majority, the government chose to include this bill which must materialize the promise of Emmanuel Macron on assisted reproduction and had been postponed due to the health crisis. 

Opponents find additional arguments: examination "on the sly", "in the midst of an economic crisis" imposing other priorities, again denounced Annie Genevard (LR) during the last questions to the government. His group, standing up against a "fatherless PMA", mostly voted against the bill at first reading. 

But the text "carries with it social, societal, medical and scientific advances" and "is expected by a large part of the French population," replied the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran.

Many see this review as a sign to the left. But the leader of the LREM, Aurore Bergé, affirms it: the bill "is not labeled left or right".  

Its flagship measure is the extension of assisted reproduction to single women and female couples. It also includes a modification of access to origins for people born through sperm donation or the self-preservation of oocytes and research on embryonic stem cells. 

"Serious transgressions" 

Former LREM deputy, Olivier Véran took the place of Agnès Buzyn. At the Chancellery, Éric Dupond-Moretti succeeded Nicole Belloubet, and will have to defend the delicate aspect of reform of filiation. 

On the research, a little less controversial, it is still Frédérique Vidal who drives on the other hand. 

In October 2019 at first reading, the text was adopted after two and a half weeks of passionate discussions. The Senate then validated it in February 2020 but modified, in particular limiting the reimbursement by the Social Security to the only PMA of "medical nature". 

Most of these changes came back to committee. Under the spur of elected officials, they also adopted the authorization of the donation of gametes directed between two women within the same couple, if one of them suffers from infertility (technique known as ROPA), and also the extension of the preimplantation diagnosis in search of chromosomal abnormalities. 

Strongly opposed to the bill, the Alliance Vita association protested against "serious transgressions", pleading for "stop [er] doing anything". And the Demonstration for all, which has planned an action on Monday near the Palais Bourbon, sees in ROPA "the antechamber of surrogacy" [recourse to a surrogate mother]. 

The text would be more “progressive” with a referendum, assures Vita 

The government remains "unfavorable" to this technique, indicated the Minister of Health. Likewise on the expansion of the preimplantation diagnosis, even if as a deputy before he was in favor. 

And the boss of the deputies "walkers", Gilles Le Gendre, to call for "not to reopen decided debates", despite the "temptation" of some and the "freedom of vote" on this text. 

Thus the battle in the Hemicycle could also take place within the majority itself. Very committed, the co-rapporteur Jean-Louis Touraine (LREM) judges that "the executive is getting a little cautious".  

"If we had a referendum, I am convinced that the text would be more progressive than today", assured the magazine Têtu, this professor of medicine. 

The right, which emphasizes that whatever happens, the text will not have finished its parliamentary course, asked in vain for its position to the new Prime Minister Jean Castex (ex-LR). 

With AFP

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