The French parliament will on Tuesday begin debating a controversial bioethics law whose flagship measure would open fertility treatments to women outside heterosexual marriage, reports the Financial Times.
The extension of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) to all women was one of the campaign promises of President Emmanuel Macron and would mark the first major social reform of his five-year term.
The legislation would allow homosexual and single women to have free access to fertility treatments such as IVF under France’s national health insurance.
The measure is part of a wide-ranging law that seeks to strike a balance between what is technically possible and ethically desirable. Agnès Buzyn, the health minister said on Monday that the bill should “open our eyes to what is the contemporary French family, a family with many faces, which flourishes in various forms”.
“France is behind many other countries and is still bound by taboos regarding the family,” Coralie Dubost, an MP for the ruling La République en Marche party, told the FT.