ANTI. Protesters wave flags as they take part in a protest against a government plan to let single women and lesbians become pregnant with fertility treatments, on October 6, 2019 in Paris. Photo by Lucas Barioulet/AFP
"For two years now our attempts at dialogue have gone nowhere... the street is the only place left for us to be heard," Ludovine de la Rochere, president of the Protest for Everyone association, told journalists Sunday. But that law did not allow lesbian couples or single women to have children via in-vitro fertilization or other medically assisted means, long a taboo in France.
It would also allow children conceived with donated sperm to find out the donor's identity when they turn 18, a change from the country's strict donor anonymity protections. "The family, with a mother and a father, is an ecosystem that needs protecting," said Christian Kersabiec, 68, who came to the march Sunday from Vannes in Brittany, denouncing"this new society where they play the sorcerer's apprentice."
And an Ifop poll in September found that 68 percent approved IVF and other medically assisted procreation for single women, and 65 percent for lesbian couples.