France’s lower house of parliament has definitively adopted a law that will allow single women and lesbians avail of donor assisted human reproduction.

Previously, it was reserved for infertile heterosexual couples, thus ensuring that a child would be born to and raised by a mother and a father.

The wide-ranging bioethics bill presented by French President Emmanuel Macron’s government, was approved at the National Assembly with 326 votes for and 115 against.

The measure has been long sought by LGBT groups, who had pushed it since France legalised same-sex marriage in 2013.

The vote marks the end of a protracted, two-year debate in parliament. The conservative majority in the Senate repeatedly rejected the measure, but the lower house of parliament, where Mr Macron’s centrist party has a majority, has the final say.

The new law does not address France’s ban on surrogacy arrangements in which one woman carries and delivers a baby for someone else.