The French Senate has adopted a draft bioethics law [1] by a relatively small margin of 10 votes [2]. Among other things, the bill enables the use of donor sperm by single women and female couples to create children who would be raised without a father [3]. Some of the more extreme elements of the bill have been moderated and it now goes back to the lower house, the National Assembly, where President Macron’s Government command a majority.
The bill has faced significant public protests with tens of thousands of people marching against it in Paris. A nationwide “consultation” through official public meetings and via an internet platform found 80 percent of the participants were against its signature elements. It has also been attacked by the National Academy of Medicine in France which said the deliberate conception of a child deprived of a father constitutes a major anthropological break, which risks the psychological development of the child [4].