In the chamber of the Senate, in December 2020. -

Thomas SAMSON / AFP

From Tuesday, the bioethics bill, and its flagship measure opening the PMA to all women, will return to the Senate, with a right-wing majority, which narrowly voted for the first time with broad changes.

Last year, the text gave rise, at first reading, to two weeks of heated debates, accompanied each evening by demonstrations against the extension of ART (medically assisted procreation) in front of the gates of the Luxembourg Palace.

New faces

In one year, a lot has changed.

The text, which was adopted at second reading by the National Assembly this summer, will be examined over three short days in the Senate hemicycle, eclipsed by the new turn of the screw expected against the Covid-19.

The cast has changed in government.

Agnès Buzyn, who had deployed all her strength of conviction to defend the text, gave way to Olivier Véran at the Ministry of Health.

A minister monopolized by the epidemic and whom senators regret to see very little.

"The Covid crushes everything, cannibalizes the debates", notes the centrist co-rapporteur Olivier Henno.

The Senate was partially renewed last September and if the right-wing majority came out of the elections strengthened, on this bill which touches the intimate, positions more personal than partisan.

Will the incoming senators move the lines?

"She's an unknown," agrees LR co-rapporteur Muriel Jourda.

For Bernard Jomier, PS co-rapporteur, “things shouldn't change much”.

Finally, Covid requires, opponents of the opening of the PMA, La Manif pour tous in the lead, must adapt their mobilization, even if they do not disarm.

Modification of parentage

The senators restored in committee the text on the opening of the PMA adopted by the Senate at first reading, which had been crushed by the deputies.

Muriel Jourda, like the leader of the LR group Bruno Retailleau, are purely and simply opposed to this version, but had to align themselves with "a position of the lesser evil": opening of the PMA to couples of women and to single women, but no coverage by Social Security for these new beneficiaries.

And maintaining a medical criterion for heterosexual couples.

"It is a lip-service yes, with a number of locks so that the new law cannot apply", summarizes Bernard Jomier.

As a consequence of the opening of the assisted reproduction system, the text provides for a new method of filiation for the children of female couples.

The senators did not come back to committee on the device voted by the deputies.

Filiation will be established with regard to the woman who gave birth via her designation in the birth certificate, while the one who did not bear the baby will be established by joint recognition.

On the other hand, the senators rewrote the article concerning the filiation of a child born abroad from a surrogacy (surrogacy), prohibited in France, in order to "prohibit any complete transcription" of a foreign birth certificate. .

Access to the origins

Another subject, the provision authorizing the self-preservation of gametes (oocytes and spermatozoa) except for medical reasons, which had created great confusion in the hemicycle at first reading.

The Senate had finally suppressed it, with an equality of votes for and against.

It was reinstated by the deputies and adopted once again by the special commission, with modifications.

The text provides that children born from a donation of gametes after the entry into force of the law can, as they come of age, access "non-identifying data" (age, physical characteristics, etc.) of the donor and even, they want it, to its identity.

The senators, however, have provided in committee that the donor can accept or refuse access to his identity at the time the request is made.

In addition, the senators also banned in committee the creation of transgenic embryos and chimeric embryos as well as all techniques of genomic modification of human embryos.

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