The French National Assembly has approved a plan to outlaw abortion information websites that masquerade as neutral, official services with freephone helpline numbers but promote anti-abortion propaganda and pressure women not to terminate pregnancies, reports The Guardian.
The Socialist government’s proposal seeks to criminalise any websites that deliberately mislead, intimidate or “exert psychological or moral pressure” on a woman seeking information about terminating a pregnancy, with punishment of up to two years in prison and a €30,000 fine.
It will now need to pass through the French senate.
The issue has sparked a row in recent days, with a Catholic archbishop writing to François Hollande, the president, warning of a threat to freedom of expression. MPs debating the bill heckled each other and complained of vicious insults in committee hearings.
France legalised abortion more than 40 years ago and already has a law that makes it a criminal offence to intimate or pressure a woman in order to stop her terminating a pregnancy. This law was initially aimed at anti-abortion protesters in the 1980s who tried to physically obstruct women from accessing clinics or advice centres, and was later extended to anyone exerting moral or psychological pressure on women.
The government now wants to extend the law further to include websites, claiming that the anti-abortion battle that used to take place outside clinics has now moved online.