The Senate hardens its tone.
On the night of Wednesday to Thursday, parliamentarians adopted the bioethics bill without the flagship measure of the text - the PMA for all - with the only favorable votes of the right-wing senatorial majority.
During this second reading at the Luxembourg Palace, the senators thus revised their copy.
A year earlier, they had given the green light to the opening of the PMA to couples of women and single women, while excluding their reimbursement by Social Security.
To read also:
"To speak of PMA" of comfort ", it is to ignore reality"
In a few weeks, seven senators and seven deputies will meet in a joint committee (CMP) to try to find an agreement on the text.
Due to their strong differences, a compromise seems unlikely.
If unsuccessful, the bill would be considered a third time in the National Assembly.
This new reading could take place
"in the spring"
for a final adoption of the text
"before the summer"
, confirms the cabinet of Adrien Taquet, Secretary of State in charge of Children and Families.
"I regret a little that the Senate has missed the chance to improve the text"
, commented the President LR of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, before the Association of Parliamentary Journalists.
"There, somewhere, the National Assembly will have the last word."
MEPs should indeed revert to the previous version of the text.
The fate of article 1 of the text was sealed on Tuesday.
During the day, the senators had excluded single women from the opening of the PMA.
A little later, the vote of an amendment authorizing post-mortem PMA, in the confusion, was contested.
These two modifications led to the rejection of the entirety of Article 1, as the symbol of an impossible conciliation.
At the end of the examination, a deliberation and a new vote were to take place on this article but the bioethics committee renounced it due to disagreements
.
"Contempt for equality"
The left and senators close to LREM denounced a
“completely distorted”
text
.
"It was chaos yesterday in the hemicycle and it is the shipwreck at the end of the discussion
, regretted the rapporteur Bernard Jomier (PS).
This text is the result of a mess ”.
Thursday, Bruno Retailleau, leader of the LR group in the Senate, replied in a press release that it was
“paradoxical on the part of the left to regret the deletion of an article that it refused to vote for!”
During the debate, several right-wing elected officials deplored the lack of consensus building on the part of the government and the majority.
“This vote sends the message to the government that its position is not necessarily shared by all.
The states general of bioethics revealed that society is not unanimous on this development, ”
points out Muriel Jourda (LR), co-rapporteur of the law.
Like other senators of all stripes, she also believes that
"the original vice"
was to mix the societal subject of assisted reproduction with a bioethical text.
To read also:
Mgr de Moulins-Beaufort: "The laws of bioethics organize a tragedy to come"
On the bench of the government, Adrien Taquet wondered about
"the electoral ambitions which advance masked"
.
At the end of the reading, despite his
“regrets”
on the outcome of the text, he nevertheless praised
“the quality of these debates”
.
On the side of associations, SOS-homophobia blasted an
"unacceptable step backwards"
and a
"real contempt for equality".
Conversely, La Manif pour tous considered that it was a
"halt to PMA without a father and surrogacy".
Surrogacy, chimeric embryos, IMG: what has changed
As at first reading, the bill has been stripped of several flagship measures and largely revised.
Senators opposed the possibility for women of self-preservation of their oocytes without medical reason.
They recommend asking the donor's consent so that children born of a donation can have access to their origins.
On the sensitive subject of filiation, they again opted for a system of
“accelerated adoption”
of the child by the spouse of the woman who gives birth.
To avoid weakening the ban on surrogacy, they voted to prohibit
“any complete transcription”
of a foreign birth certificate of a child born to a surrogate mother.
Read also:
PMA and GPA: the Senate looks at parentage in a tense climate
They banned the creation of chimeric embryos as well as the modification of the genome of human embryos.
Finally, they removed the consideration of
"psychosocial distress"
to access medical termination of pregnancy (IMG).
