PARIS: French gay rights campaigners celebrated a milestone for equal rights on Tuesday after parliament finalised adoption of a bill giving lesbian couples and single women access to fertility treatment for the first time. Under current French law, only heterosexual couples have the right to access medically assisted procreation methods such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF). Lesbian couples and single women who want children have to travel abroad for IVF using donor sperm.
That is set to change under the bill pushed through by President Emmanuel Macron's government, which passed a final vote in the National Assembly after two years of protests and 500 hours of debate.
The draft law, which was backed by 326 MPs to 115 against, with 42 abstentions, brings France in line with a dozen European countries, including Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and Spain, that do not discriminate between heterosexual and same-sex couples, or between couples and single women, when it comes to reproductive rights.
The Inter-LGBT association said it welcomed the change, which it described as a "forceps birth" after years of foot-dragging by successive governments and further delays wrought by the coronavirus pandemic.
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