France: fertility treatment for everyone
All women in France may now undergo artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization (IVF) free of charge. Lesbian couples and single women had been barred from such treatments up to now. After two years of debate, France's parliament passed the amended bioethics law on Tuesday. Commentators in and outside France are not satisfied with this solution.
Now make surrogate motherhood legal
Men must also be given the opportunity to have children without restrictions, columnist Luc Le Vaillant demands in Libération:
“Now that the National Assembly is granting the right to artificial insemination to all women, we should remember that gender equality in parenthood would only be made possible by also legalising surrogate motherhood. ... I say this quite openly: next on the agenda after artificial insemination must be surrogate motherhood, so that the desire to have children can be universally satisfied. ... I've had two children myself in the most conventional way, and I don't see why I should forbid others from spreading their genes.”
Little French children without fathers
Ria Novosti says the law will have devastating consequences:
“The bioethics law changes the structure of French society even more than the one that allowed same-sex marriage in 2013. ... France's elite, which first presented Hollande and then Macron, has decided to sacrifice the future of several generations of French children to achieve its goals by feeding them into this social project. First they stripped children of the concepts of 'mother' and 'father' (only 'parent' or 'guardian' are registered in institutions) and now they're taking away the concept of fatherhood. And that of father along with it.”