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PARIS (AP) — France’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday definitively adopted a law that will allow single women and lesbians access to medically assisted reproduction for the first time.
The wide-ranging bioethics law, presented by French President Emmanuel Macron’s government, was approved at the National Assembly with 326 votes for and 115 against.
The measure has been much awaited by LGBT rights groups, who had pushed for the reproduction measure since France legalized same-sex marriage in 2013.
The new law will expand access to fertility treatments such as artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization (IVF), currently reserved only for infertile heterosexual couples.
In France, fertility treatments are free — and this would now also include lesbian couples and single women.
Health Minister Olivier Veran said French authorities are getting ready to apply the new law as quickly as possible, so that the first children could be conceived by the end of the year.
The vote marks the end of a protracted, two-year debate in parliament. The conservative majority in the Senate repeatedly rejected the measure, but the lower house...