![[Press Release] Alliance VITA Denounces the Abortion Rider on the Bioethics Bill](https://www.alliancevita.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/IMG_loibioethique-1080x675.jpg)
by Alliance VITA | August 1, 2020 | Abortion, Bioethics Law, Press Releases
Alliance VITA denounces the hastily adopted abortion rider, tagged on to the French bioethics bill, and examined in the middle of the night. It would obviate existing abortion laws, by attaching the unverifiable criterion of “psychosocial distress”. If the bill is passed into law, it would allow “medical abortions” to be performed up until full-term pregnancy.
Undisputedly, pregnant women experiencing distress deserve to have society’s full and undivided attention. Nevertheless since “distress” cannot be defined objectively, past history has shown that it has been used to bend the law, with the following outcomes:
- abortion is presented as a foregone conclusion for any unplanned or complicated pregnancy;
- any potential prevention policies for abortion are forsaken, despite its life-threatening nature and the difficult post-abortion consequences experienced by many women.
Providing support services for women concerned by a myriad of delicate issues related to maternity for the past 20 years, Alliance VITA resolutely calls for:
- this deceitful legislative rider to be withdrawn. It has no place in this bill because abortion is not a subject to be treated in an ad hoc manner without any preliminary deliberations.
- an epidemiological study to be conducted to analyze the causes, conditions and consequences of abortions over the past 20 years;
- holding authentic discussions on the causes and consequences of abortion.
by Alliance VITA | July 31, 2020 | Coronavirus, News, Old age and Dependency
In France, a Parliamentary investigational committee was appointed to evaluate the management and the consequences of the coronavirus crisis. After 6 weeks of hearings, on July 28, the rapporteur Eric Ciotti, (MP for the Alps Maritime region) presented the committee’s preliminary findings on the elderly.
What are the preliminary findings?
France was ill-prepared and failed to anticipate this major crisis, as shown by the trend of masks supply over the past ten years. A new policy had been issued in 2013 by the General Secretariat for Defense and National Security (“SGDSN”) which rendered all employers responsible for managing their own stockpile of masks. This policy change included healthcare establishments. Nevertheless, those responsible for public and private hospitals and nursing homes were not informed. In 2009 a total of 2.9 billion masks were available, but the stockpile had dwindled to 100 million by the time the crisis began.
In 2018, when informed that practically all the masks were expired, the Directorate General of Health (“DSG”) only ordered 50 million new masks, barely 0.05 % of the estimated 1 billion masks recommended in the event of a flu epidemic.
As of January 2020, scientists and the French government did not seem to have fully assessed the potential extent of the coronavirus crisis. Only by March an action plan was elaborated but it was too late. Insufficient testing was a major factor which contributed to the spread of the epidemic during the initial stages of the crisis. By mid-March, France had only tested 12,000 people, compared to Germany where 500,000 citizens had already been tested. According to the rapporteur, the belated response time was partly due to unnecessary competition between laboratories and to administrative roadblocks. In addition the crisis was exacerbated by the slow-moving French bureaucratic system.
Was there triage of patients?
In hospitals almost all non-Covid patient care was postponed, the side effects of this delay having not been evaluated yet.
Doubts are raised by the fact that statistics point to a significant decrease in the number of elderly treated in intensive care units (ICU). The French newspaper “Le Monde” quotes the rapporteur as saying: “At the beginning of April at the summit of the crisis, the number of people over 75 years admitted to intensive care fell substantially. The average number of elderly in ICU dropped from an average of 25% (based on previous years for the same period) to 14% during the crisis, and as low as 6% in the metropolitan Paris region (Ile-de-France). Our healthcare system was overwhelmed, which consequently reduced the chances for caring for the elderly. Many could possibly have been saved. This is very alarming. ”
Numerous doctors who coordinate care in medicalized nursing homes deplored the lack of protective equipment (masks, gowns, etc) when the crisis began. Centralized hospital care, a hallmark of the French health system, took its tolls on the population. In the beginning only the hospitals performed coronavirus testing, while private laboratories were excluded. Likewise, the public emergency services (“SAMU”) were stretched beyond capacity, while 60,000 doctors in private practice were barely called upon.
The preliminary findings by Parliament’s investigation committee concur with Alliance VITA’s press release issued as soon as March 26, 2020 which warned that the epidemic put the elderly at a greater risk of discrimination and euthanasia. “Alliance VITA requests for the public authorities to include the elderly in the COVID-19 death statistics, to screen all citizens regardless of age, and to reconfirm that individuals of all ages have a right to healthcare treatment without being killed.”
According to the committee’s preliminary findings, France now appears better prepared to handle a potential second wave of coronavirus. Nonetheless, the committee recommended implementing several structural changes: private health care providers need to be more closely included in crisis management, healthcare reservists need to be called to a greater extent, and resuscitation services need to be continuously improved and sustainable.
It is imperatively urgent to better take into account the elderly who suffered the most during the epidemic; to provide improved medical services in nursing homes, and to encourage and recognize the value of in-home care and support services.
![[Press Release]: Alliance VITA Implores French MP’s to Vote against the Bioethics Bill](https://www.alliancevita.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/AssembleeNationale-1080x675.jpg)
by Alliance VITA | July 27, 2020 | Bioethics Law, Press Releases
On July 27, during the extraordinary session of the French National Assembly, the second reading of the Bioethics bill was retained by the Government.
Despite the fact that France is facing urgent economical, social and ecological issues in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, this increasingly controversial bill has been squeezed into the closing hours of Parliament’s summer session, right in the midst of reshuffling the Cabinet.
Alliance VITA continues to denounce the various forms of manipulating human lives embedded in this bioethics bill:
- Systematizing prenatal diagnostic testing in order to select even greater numbers of human beings according to their genetic criteria.
- Authorizing “saviour babies” which presupposes a double pre-implant genetic screening process to produce a healthy and compatible embryo, in order to use his cells to treat a sick sibling.
- Spending Social Security finances to provide ART (assisted reproductive technology) for all women, living in pairs, or single, thereby negating the previous requirement of medically diagnosed infertility for both ART access and reimbursement. Children will thus be programmed in a deliberate absence of their father, in a complete upheaval of parentage principles.
- Producing human-animal chimeras (human embryo stem cells mixed with animal embryos)
- Manufacturing transgenic human embryos
Alliance VITA deplores that French Parliament, in its obstinacy to push through the bill, has lost its control of the revision process. Some extremely transgressive practices which the government originally refuted were finally endorsed by the MP’s in a special committee including ROPA (reception of oocytes from a partner) and PGD (pre-implant genetic diagnosis). ROPA breaks motherhood into morsels since one woman donates her eggs to be implanted in another one’s uterus, but the role of the child’s father is completely ignored. The PGD technique is used to detect chromosomal abnormalities such as Down’s syndrome, an obviously highly eugenic measure.
Caroline Roux, Alliance VITA’s Assistant General Delegate declares:
“While the health crisis has made us keenly aware that it is important to protect humanity just as much as the environment, the government persists on pushing through a law which will intensify the manipulation of human beings, with an inherent impact on future generations in defiance of any precautionary principle whatsoever. We can no longer rely on any previous rationale. In order to show our solidarity with the most vulnerable, our focus should be centered on our fellow human beings, – but not to manipulate them, nor to carry out selections, whether it be at the embryonic stage or at later stages in life. Enough is enough! Let’s stop the fiasco! The consequences of such irresponsibility will assuredly fall upon our future generations. Alliance VITA implores any MP’s who respect the values of humanity, solidarity and genuine ecology to vote against this law. “
![[Press Release]: French Bioethics Bill: That’s Enough, Stop the Fiasco!](https://www.alliancevita.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/AssembleeNationale_juillet2020-1080x675.jpg)
by Alliance VITA | July 8, 2020 | Bioethics Law, News
Alliance VITA denounces the government’s obstinacy to push through the bioethics law as soon as July 27th, a proof of its lack of respect for the parliament members’ contributions.
Tugdual Derville, Alliance VITA’s General Delegate deplores the current fiasco:
“Scheduling the proceedings for bioethics bill in the National Assembly during the very last week of July is absurd and grossly unfair. President Macron is thereby betraying the French by breaking his own promise of conducting a peaceful debate. In the midst of his Cabinet’s reshuffle and following with the same rationale as naming Jean-Louis Touraine as rapporteur for the bill, the French president now lets the most transgressive members of his party wield the debate.
As a result, after having tossed out the viewpoints solicited throughout the National Consultations on Bioethics and the hearings at the presidential Elysée Palace, he let the special commission vote on newly added provisions, in the absence of his ministers; including provisions which were previously refuted by his own government. How can he simultaneously pamper a small minority electoral niche, while dismissing the needs of the most vulnerable, all the while presuming he can call on the country to make united efforts to tackle an unprecedented economic and healthcare crisis? “
Through a special committee, the MP’s have adopted a text replete with serious ethical transgressions; including motherhood broken into pieces using IVF for two mothers with ROPA (reception of oocytes from a partner), endorsing more extensive PGD (preimplantation genetic diagnosis) to detect chromosomal abnormalities such as Down’s syndrome, authorizing the creation of human-animal chimeras and transgenic human embryos, as well as legalizing ART without a father (assisted reproductive techniques) which misappropriates the nation’s medical resources and public finances.
Enough is enough! Stop the fiasco! Alliance VITA requests for the Prime Minister to postpone this debate and, above all, requests for the government to stand firm against the minority of MPs who behave like lobbyists while concealing themselves behind their parliamentary status.
by Alliance VITA | July 3, 2020 | News, ART, Medically Assisted Procreation
An amendment to legalize “ROPA” was introduced at the French National Assembly by deputy and spokesman Jean-Louis Touraine (from President Macron’s centrist and liberal party “LREM”: the Republic Moving Forward). Although the government has thus far been opposed to the “ROPA” procedure, the bioethics committee adopted it at second reading.
“ROPA” is an acronym invented by its advocates to designate the “Reception of Oocytes from the Partner”, a procedure allowing same-sex couples to “share motherhood” whereby one woman contributes with her oocytes and the other woman contributes with her uterus.
With the father already eliminated from the equation, the filiation rules will become increasingly muddled and confusing for the child born from such manipulations.
