Le Mariage Pour Tous
le site de référence pour tout comprendre des enjeux sur le #mariagepourtous

Surrogacy mothers, medically assisted procreation and #MarriageEquality in France

lundi 6 mai 2013

Some of our american followers seem to have trouble finding out the ins and outs about assisted reproductive technologies and marriage equality in France. We’ll try to explain in short.

- Surrogacy mothers have been forbidden by law since 1994, based on the idea (quick translation) that you can’t monetize your own body.
- Medically assisted procreation was legalized by law the same year (Bioethics laws), but in 2004 was specifically restricted for the use of heterosexual couples (married, or leaving together for the past 2 years), within 2 conditions :

  • infertility medically proven
  • risk of transmitting to the child a genetic disease

LGBT movement has long asked for the recognition of medically assisted procreation for lesbian couples (mainly arguing that it’s not medical infertility, but social infertility which is at stake). The government agreed, saying it would come in a separate law (about families) by the end of 2013.
Surrogacy mothers is not part of the debate, even though some personalities (LGBT activists, or ministers for ex.) said they were in favor (noticeably enough, mostly women) : it’s not in the marriage equality, not foreseen to be in the Families law, and the President said he would not allow it as long he is president.

The opponents fear that the marriage equality law will open the doors to both medically assisted procreation and surrogacy mothers.

They mainly talk about medically assisted procreation when talking about homosexuals (aka lesbian) couples, forgetting it is mainly used by heterosexuals (about 50.000 children/year).
They do not agree within their organization on the subject :
- some say that what matters is the fact of having 2 fathers or 2 mothers, which would be harmful for children (mainly using the Regnerus study)
- some say that they disagree with medically assisted procreation for both hetero and homosexuals (this is obviously the most conservative part of the catholic church, affiliated mainly with the pro-life movement).

In short, you may have different ways of putting it :
- they use the marriage equality issue to bring up social issues (medically assisted procreation, surrogacy mothers … abortion ? contraception ?), which is clearly the point of one the leader of their movement, C.Boutin (former minister and MP) : "we want to fight against the 1968 social values"
- they truly consider marriage equality as the doors opened to assisted reproduction technologies, forgetting these issues have existed long since before, and will do so long after
- or, let’s not exclude it, they perfectly know it’s a red-herring, and use it politically because they know that this is issue is still to be debated in France.

Ce site a été actif entre novembre 2012 et mai 2013, pendant les débats sur la loi concernant l’ouverture du mariage civil aux couples de même sexe.
 
Il est, et restera, à disposition de ceux qui le souhaitent pour garder en mémoire les peurs, contre-vérités et attaques de ceux qui y étaient opposés.

Deuxième édition pour Marions-les ! ,le livre gratuit à avoir toujours sur soi, pour ne plus se laisser impressionner par contre-vérités et approximations.


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