Protests against IVF access for gay and single women in France
Image: Sunday's protest against reproductive technology changes in Paris. Photo: Gilbert Collard/Twitter.
Thousands of conservative activists marched through Paris on Sunday to protest a new French bioethics law allowing lesbian couples and single women the right to conceive children with medical help.
The new bill is French President Emmanuel Macron’s first major push for social reform in the field of reproductive technology, and would end discrimination over reproductive rights by enabling lesbian couples and single women access to medically-assisted procreation, such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and sperm donation.
The protest began outside the Senate, where the new law will be decided this month, and proceeded to the Tour Montparnasse skyscraper in southern Paris. However, left-wing and pro-LGBTIQ groups were quick to counter-protest, and with police cut off several streets in case of violence.
‘Where is my Dad?’ read placards as conservative Catholic groups and far-right activists passed the French senate.
Many chanted: “Liberty, Equality, Paternity”, a play on the national French motto of ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’.
Other protestors shouted: “Everyone needs a father.”
President of the Association of Catholic Families, Pascale Moriniere, said her group had distributed about three million flyers to protest the law in recent weeks.
Speaking to DW, Moriniere remained adamant that the size of this week’s protest would match France’s 2012 protest against same-sex marriage.
“It’s not going to be derisory. It will probably be comparable to the first protest [against gay marriage] in 2012, with around 100,000 people,” she said.
Under current French law, only heterosexual couples who have been married or living together for more than two years have the right to access procedures such as artificial insemination, sperm donation or IVF.
While organisers of the protest had hoped for 100,000 people protesters, approximately 74,500 people took part in the rally, Franceinfo reported, citing the research company Occurrence, which had counted the participants.
Seven years ago, the legalisation of same-sex marriage in France was unique among neighbouring nations in sparking months of large street demonstrations, which saw violent conflicts between far-right groups and riot police, as well as leading to a rise in homophobic attacks.
The Manif Pour Tous, a group that fervently opposed gay marriage in France in 2013, has rebranded itself as Marchons Enfants and protested against the IVF bill in Paris, alongside sixteen other socially conservative groups.
“This protest is a warning to the government,” said the head of Marchons Enfants, Ludovine de la Rochère.
“We’ll fight to stop children being conceived without a father, you don’t make children in laboratories,” another demonstrator said.
Sunday’s protestors came from all walks of life, from pensioners to couples with young children.
A handful of politicians from the far-right National Rally party, presided over by conservative politician Marine Le Pen, were present at the protest. Politicians from the centre-right Les Républicains party also took part, despite divisions within the the party on the issue.
Last month, the lower house of the French Parliament approved the draft bioethics law.
The bill must now be approved by the upper house, or Senate, before it can be passed.
This kind of homophobia makes me sick to the stomach. The implication is heterosexuals never get parenting wrong and homosexuals would screw it up.
It was the same argument used in the marriage equality hate campaign. ‘Kids need a mom and dad.’ No, kids need a loving relationship with their care givers. If their care giver is a single male, female, two males or two females, what’s important is that they feel love and security.
It’s the same old story, straight white males can do no wrong and a heterosexual couple would never ever beat or abuse a child … but two men/women together, or a single woman, well they are basically paedophiles anyway! As I said, this thinking, which is behind this protesting, makes me sick to the stomach.
This law in France makes no sense or rationality to me at all. Since 2013, both gay marriage and adoption by same sex couples was finally made legal within France – but IVF treatment is still banned within France for single women and lesbians? Single women and lesbians just for years went to neighbouring countries to get IVF done anyway say for example in Spain, UK and Belgium. It makes no sense or rationality to still ban IVF in France in 2019!
Right down here in Australia, within Western Australia IVF and surrogacy is still explicitly legally banned for gay couples and after more than a year of the bill being introduced to allow it – it is still ongoinely being filibustered in the upper house by the LNP opposition. ????????????????????????????????