a tweet from Marion Maréchal has revived debates on this sensitive subject

Struggling in the polls for the European elections on June 9, the head of the Reconquest list Marion Maréchal has just directly opposed GPA. Enough to relaunch debates within the political class on this sensitive issue.

All it took was one tweet to put the question of surrogacy (GPA) back into the debate. A “Where is the mother ?” signed Marion Maréchal, Tuesday April 23, in reaction to the famous fashion designer Jacquemus who has just welcomed twins with her husband. Of “homophobia”, according to government spokesperson Prisca Thévenot or the Minister of Justice Éric Dupont-Moretti, and especially the Minister of Families, Sarah El Hairy, who reacted strongly on Saturday April 27 on BFM, denouncing the “violence” of the tweet published, according to her, to “electoral purposes”.

If the majority has come out against Marion Maréchal, that does not mean that the Macronists are, fundamentally, favorable to GPA. Emmanuel Macron has always made it a red line. The government is against the commodification of women’s bodies, in the name “of human dignity”.

However, the Minister of Families, Sarah El Hairy, is more open. She wishes that one day “this debate can take place”particularly to get out of “hypocrisy”, because the fact is that couples have children born through surrogacy abroad. Bruno Le Maire explained at the start of the year that he was “in reflection” on the subject, touched by the story of a couple of friends who had a child thanks to a surrogacy. Former minister Clément Beaune is one of the rare Macronists openly in favor of surrogacy. “On this subject, everyone has their own opinion,” slips an advisor to the executive.

A subject that bothers the majority

Sarah El Hairy’s intervention was therefore appreciated differently by the majority. A Macronist MP does not lose her temper: “We’re going to alienate voters again, it doesn’t do us any good to talk about GPA.” “Why create controversy ourselves ??”, annoys a ministerial advisor. A close friend of Gabriel Attal believes that this is not “not the debate of the moment”, that this kind of sensitive subject can only be decided in a presidential campaign. François Bayrou, MoDem like Sarah El Hairy, explained Monday April 30 on franceinfo, “not entirely of the opinion” of his comrade. Others, on the contrary, find the minister’s intervention welcome, so that it does not become a subject in the middle of the European campaign “hysterized by Marion Maréchal and François-Xavier Bellamy”.

The right has also taken up the subject. The LR candidate for the European elections dreams of “global ban on surrogacy”. In the National Assembly, MP Fabien Di Filippo is campaigning with colleagues to have the ban on surrogacy included in the constitution. So much so that a leader of Reconquest is jubilant: “For a list at 6% in the polls, it’s good to have opened a debate.”