Following the adoption at 2nd reading, on August 1, of the bioethics bill by the National Assembly, a press conference by the Marchons Enfants collective! was held on August 26, 2020 in Paris.
Caroline Roux, Deputy General Delegate of Alliance VITA, took part in this press conference.
This second reading is a genuine ethical and legislative shipwreck.
The Prime Minister has a heavy responsibility. It was up to him not to rush these debates, when the emergencies are elsewhere. But he wanted to be rid of this text … thus putting future generations at great risk.
- Not only is the democratic debate not respected, with a text imposed on the sly in the middle of summer, less than 20% of deputies present and a scheduled time reduced to 25 hours.
- But also the French have been sidelined, often unaware of what is going on, with measures that keep changing from one reading to the next.
- The further we progress in the examination of this law, the less ethics it is and the more dangerous it becomes regarding the principles of protection of human dignity and life.
With an increasingly artificial procreation, which clearly inaugurates “a right to the child” (the deputies refused to write in stone that “no one has the right to the child”): ART without a father, parentage confusion, double donation of gametes which results in “making” children out of the ground, freezing of oocytes for a hypothetical late maternity by ART, risky for women’s health. A further step has been taken towards the procreation market with the collection and storage of human gametes by lucrative establishments. This is a terrible shift for France, which has always made the principle of non-commodification of humans and of the parts of their bodies, a fundamental ethical principle.
- By an increased selection of children before birth, on genetic criteria, in complete contradiction with the inclusive society policy that the government claims to be developing.
- crossing red lines and endangering the very integrity of the human species with the creation of human / animal chimeras and genetically modified human embryos.
Who gains from obstinately rejecting the precautionary principle? While the health crisis has made us realize that humanity is as much to protect as nature.
In the name of Alliance VITA which I represent, I insist: we are very mobilized against the legislative rider which blows up the framework for abortion in France by adding an unverifiable criterion of “psychosocial distress” to have recourse to medical termination of pregnancy, allowing an abortion until the last day of pregnancy.
We demand that this provision be withdrawn and that a support and solidarity policy be implemented for pregnant women facing difficulties, and that an epidemiological study be conducted over the last 20 years which should analyze the causes, conditions and consequences of abortion.
The revision of this bioethics law misses three major and urgent issues:
- genuinely fighting infertility,
- stopping the eugenics breaches and
- respecting the integrity of the human species.
We call on senators, who still have the power to change the law, to rise to the challenges to preserve the ethics, for the protection of the most vulnerable. “
With Marchons enfants, Alliance VITA calls on people to demonstrate their opposition to this bill and attachment to the rights of the most vulnerable, on October 10 throughout France.
