France adopts bioethics law that will introduce chimeras, genetic engineering of ‘human material’

June 11, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — The French National Assembly adopted a radically transgressive bioethics law that will likely enter into force at the beginning of July, once it has passed its last legislative hurdles after this third reading. It is truly revolutionary in its conception of the world and of society. It marks the end of the recognition of paternity, but also the beginning of legally manufactured chimeras, and other kinds of genetic engineering of “human material.”

France’s first bioethics law dates back to 1992; from the start, provisions were made for its periodic revision, and over the years, it has increasingly legalized embryo research. In its latest mutation, the law will allow access to artificial procreation to all women, including women in same-sex couples and single women, as had been promised by French president Emmanuel Macron in his election campaign.

Access to “medically assisted procreation for all” (“PMA pour toutes”) was rejected by the French population during public consultations before the draft law was set up, and was also taken out of the text by the Senate in February, leading to a further discussion by the National Assembly which reintroduced the measure. The newly adopted version will go back to the Senate for a third debate within a few weeks, but whatever happens there, the lower chamber will have the definitive vote which is expected to take place by the end of the month at the latest. This is in keeping with the government’s recent actions to force the text through Parliament.

The law will introduce other significant changes. For the first time, destructive research on the human embryo up to 14 days will be allowed in principle: until now, such research required special prior dispensation. The new law will also liberalize research on human embryonic stem cells, and allow the creation of artificial gametes, copies of human embryos, chimeric embryos (which can be implanted in animals), and transgenic embryos (including in vitro fertilization with “three parents”).

Access to abortion will be even easier than it already is. The new law is scrapping the cooling-off period of “at least one week,” and also provides a new justification for abortion: “the partial voluntary interruption of a multiple pregnancy.” At the same time, it does away with the obligation to consult a person holding parental authority when young women under 18 are having a “medical interruption of pregnancy:” abortions beyond the legal term of 12 weeks’ gestation and up to birth for health problems affecting the mother or the child validated by at least two doctors and a medical team.

Another barbaric provision introduced by amendment was rejected by the National Assembly. It aimed to introduce a new motive for “medical” abortions: “psycho-social distress.”

On the other hand, the specific conscience clause attached to the practice of medical abortions has been dismantled.

The most publicized aspect of the law, however, was that of fatherless procreation, as mentioned above. Old-fashioned law — law that organizes reality without contradicting it, that almost all of humanity has understood since the dawn of time — calls the woman who gives birth “mother,” and “father” the man who has begotten the new individual who was just born (such law even allows the unborn child to inherit from its deceased father, if orphaned in utero). French law assumes that the mother’s husband is a child’s father, unless proved otherwise.

All this is over. When the law enters into effect, begetting a child can become merely symbolic, and parenthood will be adapted to the woman's desire. And if you dare say that a child needs a father, it must be because you are irremediably stuck in gender stereotypes, in hatred of the LGBTQI+ community, and that you are a supporter of the “patriarchy” that, as Antonio Guterres, U.N. secretary general, said in the middle of the pandemic, is the root of all our ills.

These are the words he used last August, according to a UN tweet: “The #COVID19 pandemic is demonstrating what we all know: millennia of patriarchy have resulted in a male-dominated world with a male-dominated culture which damages everyone – women, men, girls & boys.”

This is more important than it seems. It shows that the pandemic, “bioethics,” and promoting “LGBT rights” are all linked as facets of a same ideology.

France is presently facing a severe crisis consecutive to the restrictions imposed on its population in the name of COVID. Personal freedoms have been torn to pieces, often in absurd and contradictory ways, unemployment is at a height and public spending has gone through the roof, and despite all these major problems, the French government has been focusing on forcing the bioethics law through Parliament at high speed.

Remember that “bioethics” has nothing to do with natural law or respect for human life and the human person. When it was first developed, it was presented as a form of “ethics of life” at the service of life in general and of its improvement. Understood thus, bioethics considers man as a species living among other species, while the individual is less a person than an element of humankind, that is usable, interchangeable, and modifiable.

In its logic, the new French bioethics law is a eugenicist law: It allows for the turning of man into a genetically modified organism, the crossing of the barrier of species, choosing embryos for implantation in order to “use” them as “medication” for an older sibling, and editing them using the CRISPR-Cas9 technique. To be sure, the law prohibits the implantation and gestation of genetically engineered embryos, but allows the first steps that one day might lead to the nightmare of designer babies.

Besides the negation of the truth of filiation, this urge to make tampering with the human genome legal is the most terrifying aspect of the law.

According to French geneticist Alexandra Henrion-Caude, there is a direct relationship with the COVID crisis and the pushing through of the transgressive law: As she pointed out during a January interview on Radio Courtoisie, France’s historic independent associative radio station, there is a link between the drive to use experimental “vaccines” to make human cells produce proteins by introducing mRNA, “augmenting” their capacities, and allowing modification of the DNA of embryos. The purpose is clearly “transhumanist,” she argued. The idea of augmenting the capacities of the body and mind are also central to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, as the World Economic Forum founded by Klaus Schwab sees it.

Over the last year, most decisions in France have been made by executive orders, which Parliament was allowed, at best, to comment upon. The bioethics law, instead, is being pushed down Parliament’s throat, as if the government “needed” the approval of the nation’s representatives but was at the same time prepared to force their hand.

Many opponents of the planned law complained that the conditions for a proper democratic debate were not present. Only a small proportion of deputies and senators actually assist at the parliamentary debates: In the case of the bioethics law, 130 out of the 577 were present at voting time. Also, the issue goes way beyond the population’s present concerns: getting out of the COVID quagmire, keeping jobs, reuniting with family and friends.

The government imposed the debate anyway, going out of its way to prevent ordinary hearings of the parliamentary commissions involved in the issue. Time for amendments and discussion at the National Assembly were also severely restricted, and the whole text took less than three days to discuss: the opposition “Republicains” party and independent members were for the most part unable to explain their (over 1,500) amendments and obtain a rational debate on measures that have such far-reaching consequences.

The text garnered 84 votes in favor and 43 against (as well as abstentions), with a few courageous representatives doing overtime to try to weigh in on the debate. Emmanuelle Ménard, an independent representative from the south of France, explained why she would vote against it, accusing the government and its majority party of “opening Pandora’s box:” “You are false gods in training, who believe you are above everything: common sense, reality, our fleshly nature, and especially, and this is the most serious, the best interest of the child.”

The French Bishops’ Conference published a statement condemning the new bioethics law, saying: “Once again, the law claims to authorize new transgressions by setting them within a framework. But a framework never holds. Inevitably, it ends up being erased. To frame is to authorize. Humanity has grown by imposing prohibitions on itself: the prohibition of killing an innocent person, of incest, of theft, of rape. Mixing human cells and animal cells cannot be simply set within a framework: what must be forbidden must be clearly stated; what can be authorized must also be clearly stated. This is only possible with reference to a thoughtful vision of the human person and his or her filiation.”

On the day of the vote, Bishop Olivier de Germay of Lyon issued a call for prayer during the month of June, including fasting on Fridays, to ask God to help legislators to discern the true good of society and children. A miracle could still happen in the coming days …

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Jeanne Smits has worked as a journalist in France since 1987 after obtaining a Master of Arts in Law. She formerly directed the French daily Présent and was editor-in-chief of an all-internet French-speaking news site called reinformation.tv. She writes regularly for a number of Catholic journals (Monde & vie, L’Homme nouveau, Reconquête…) and runs a personal pro-life blog. In addition, she is often invited to radio and TV shows on alternative media. She is vice-president of the Christian and French defense association “AGRIF.” She is the French translator of The Dictator Pope by Henry Sire and Christus Vincit by Bishop Schneider, and recently contributed to the Bref examen critique de la communion dans la main about Communion in the hand. She is married and has three children, and lives near Paris.