The Minister Delegate for Gender Equality, Élisabeth Moreno, “strongly” condemned on Tuesday the broadcast of the American anti-abortion film “Unplanned” Monday evening on C8.
She considered that the channel was "guilty of the offense of obstructing" the voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion).
The Superior council of audio-visual (CSA) specified to have received several referrals concerning this program and announced that it was going to examine this file.
"By agreeing to broadcast this type of program", C8 "stands in solidarity with the anti-choice movements and is guilty of the offense of obstruction condemned in our country", estimated the Minister for Gender Equality in a press release, stressing that the film “puts forward scientific untruths above all and inexorably misleads the viewer into error”.
"I strongly condemn the distribution of this film" which "constitutes an abject anti-abortion propaganda tool", underlined Elisabeth Moreno, quoted in the press release.
The offense of obstructing abortion is punishable by a fine of 30,000 euros and two years' imprisonment.
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The announcement of the film's broadcast on C8, a channel of the Canal + group (a subsidiary of Vivendi) controlled by businessman Vincent Bolloré, had aroused strong reactions from feminist associations. "No to obstruction, no to guilt", also tweeted Monday evening the predecessor of Ms. Moreno in the portfolio of Gender Equality, Marlène Schiappa, now Minister Delegate for Citizenship.
Produced by an evangelical Christian studio, the fiction “Unplanned” chronicles the turnaround of a former American family planning executive who became an anti-abortion activist. It had met with unexpected success when it was released in the United States in the spring of 2019 but also aroused strong criticism as to its veracity, particularly of an abortion scene showing a struggling fetus. According to Médiamétrie, “Unplanned” attracted an average of 304,000 viewers in front of C8, or an audience share (PDA) of 1.5%, a score much lower than that achieved by its competitor W9 with “The 12 works of Asterix” (4.8% of PDAs, on average over a million viewers).
