As the Assembly prepares to examine the bioethics bill which includes the opening of PMA to all women, the National Academy of Medicine published a report on September 21 in which it expresses “reservations”.
“There are risks that cannot be overlooked.” As the Assembly prepares to examine on Tuesday September 24 the bioethics bill which includes the opening of PMA to lesbian couples and single women, the National Academy of Medicine published on Saturday September 21 a report where she expresses “reservations”. “The deliberate conception of a child deprived of a father constitutes a major anthropological break which is not without risks for the psychological development and the fulfillment of the child”, notes the National Academy of Medicine.
In its report, the Academy, which can be seized by a request for an opinion by the government and can self-seize on any question concerning the fields of health and medical ethics, assures that its purpose does not is not to “give an opinion” on a “social measure” but “considers its duty to raise a certain number of reservations linked to possible medical consequences”. This opinion was adopted by the Academy by 69 votes for, 11 against and 5 abstentions in session by the Academy on Tuesday 17 September.
The Academy “recognizes the legitimacy of the desire for motherhood in any woman whatever the situation” but explains that “it is also necessary, under the same equality of rights, to take into account the right of any child to have a father and a mother as far as possible”. “The argument regularly put forward to reject the risk for the child is based on certain evaluations, mainly in a few Anglo-Saxon and European countries, reporting the absence of proven impact on the future of the child”, notes the Academy. But she does not consider “these data very convincing from a methodological point of view, in terms of the number of cases and the duration of observation on children who have not always reached the age of existential questions”. And to insist: “Increasingly abused by societal developments, the figure of the father nevertheless remains founding for the personality of the child as reminded by child psychiatrists, pediatricians and psychologists”.
For Agnès Buzyn, “it’s not necessarily a medical opinion”
Following the publication of this report, the Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn criticized a “dated” opinion. “To consider that there is a direct link between a child’s lack of construction and a single-parent family is false”, declared the minister on Sunday 22 September. during the Grand Jury LCI/RTL/Le Figaro. “Fortunately we manage to build ourselves even when we are raised by a single parent,” she continued.
“Today, added Agnès Buzin, we have a quarter of French families who are single-parent families. We know the difficulties of some of these families, especially who are impoverished (…). But don’t tell me that a quarter children who live and are born in these families have construction difficulties. We all have families around us with children who are brought up by their mother or their father, and we know very well that they find otherness, they find the other pattern elsewhere, in uncles, in aunts, at school (…) I believe that children develop themselves with the need to understand what the role of a mother or a father is. From there to say that they are essential…”.
The minister also took the opportunity to recall that the vice-president of the National Academy of Medicine Jean-François Mattei is “a former right-wing health minister (from 2002 to 2004, editor’s note)” who “also expresses his opinion .” “It is not necessarily a medical opinion, it is a societal opinion. It is not on this that we expect the Academy of Medicine”, she asserted.
This Monday, September 23, the main interested party defended himself from any conservatism. “I also don’t think it’s entirely reactionary to find that men have a Y chromosome and women don’t,” quipped Jean-Francois Mattei at the microphone of Europe 1 . “And that to make a child, it is accepted that the human species is an animal species with sexual reproduction. That is to say two sexes”. Also, “we believe that there are risks that cannot be overlooked”.
“We are talking about an anthropological break”
“Psychiatrists, child psychiatrists and psychologists, in the vast majority, tell us: “we would be hard pressed to say in detail what the presence of a father brings, but on the other hand, we know how to talk about the consequences of the absence of a father” (…) When there is no biological father, there is no social father, there is no parent father, we are still in a situation that is new. That’s why we talk about an anthropological break. And we are in the unknown”, he insists.
According to him, some of his colleagues will also refuse to apply the PMA for all. As for the demonstrations planned to oppose this measure, he declares: “When we announce changes in society and we do not agree, we can let it be known (…) I would add that we are demonstrating for pensions, for the climate, for the end of the month… I would find it rather curious that we did not demonstrate to oppose or to make it known that children without a father, in a society like ours, that does not may not be the best thing to do.”
According to INSEE, 1.7 million families are single-parent in France, more than one in five (22%). In 85% of cases, the mother is the head of the family.
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