French Bill: Abortion on Demand, Human/Animal Embryos

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PARIS (ChurchMilitant.com) - France is on the verge of legalizing abortion on demand up to birth as well as greenlighting experimentation with human-animal genetic hybrids.

In the middle of the night on Aug. 1, France's National Assembly tacked on a last-minute, extreme pro-abortion legislative rider to a bioethics bill.

The rider permits abortion up to birth for "psychosocial distress," as well as the genetic modification of embryos, including the introduction of human stem cells into animal embryos — known as chimeras — and state-funded artificial procreation for lesbians and single women.

Riders are "sections or clauses not germane to the subject matter of a bill that are added by amendment before passage for a specific strategic purpose."

Instant Dismay

The night the bill passed the National Assembly, French bishop Bernard Ginoux of Montauban said in a tweet: "#Vote of the YEAR. This is how civilizations die and the genius of people is annihilated. Those who come after us are in great danger."

Echoing Ginoux's sentiments in an interview with French journal Valeurs Actuelles published on Thursday, Tugdual Derville of pro-life group Alliance VITA talked about the bill as a "disguise of evil for good."

"This process is emotional blackmail. ... They abuse emotion to numb our sanity," he said.

"What always strikes me in these debates is the energy expended to make the simplest realities complex — for example, that a child is born to a man and a woman, that father and mother are complementary and interchangeable," he continued.

According to Derville, the word "bioethics" is a misleading label used to break common-sense realities and muddy principles. Such muddying denies "anthropological fundamentals that future generations need."

"Getting out of this binary [man and woman] to which we all owe our lives is to play with fire," he concluded.

Summary of the Rider

"Medical termination of pregnancy (IMG) is a medical procedure that takes place when there is a high probability that the unborn child will have a particularly serious condition recognized as incurable at the time of diagnosis," reads a summary of the bill with the added rider in question, "or when the continuation of pregnancy seriously endangers the health of the pregnant woman, which includes situations of psychosocial distress."

"However, we can only too often raise questions and differences of interpretation on the advisability of taking into account psychosocial distress among the causes of serious danger justifying the performance of an IMG," continues the summary. "It is therefore necessary to clarify the legal framework in which the medical college delivers its opinion on the advisability of performing this act."

"This is the object of this amendment by the Socialists and affiliated group, resulting from the work of the Delegation for Women's Rights, which recalls that the continuation of a pregnancy can entail a serious risk to women's health due to situations of psychosocial distress," concludes the summary.

The "Socialists and affiliated group" is a parliamentary group in the National Assembly that includes representatives of the Socialist Party in France. The National Assembly is the lower house of French Parliament under the Fifth Republic.

The upper house, the Senate, will read the bill a second time most likely by the end of the year. The Senate will probably modify the text, leading to the formation of a joint committee of the Senate and National Assembly to produce a compromise text.

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