Mass protests in France against IVF for single, lesbian and bisexual women

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Paris to protest allowing single, lesbian and bisexual women in France to access state-funded IVF.

Current French law allows state-funded Medically Assisted Procreation (PMA) only to heterosexual couples who are married or have been living together for at least two years.

The draft bioethics law has been approved by France’s lower house of parliament, and would allow give all women the right to PMA regardless of relationship status or orientation.

But political and religious conservatives, many of them the same groups that demonstrated against the legalisation of same-sex marriage in 2013, marched past the French senate on October 6 to protest the bill.

According to the BBC, police said that 42,000 protesters took part in the demonstration.

Protesters held signs reading “Where is your dad?” and “Liberty, Equality, Paternity,” a play on the French motto.

Same-sex marriage was legalised during François Hollande’s presidency, but the bill that could allow all women to access fertility treatment like IVF would be President Emmanuel Macron’s first major social reform.