Invited to speak on LCI, on Wednesday, July 24, Jordan Bardella, MEP for the RN pleaded for a popular consultation on “issues as essential as the PMA”.
The former spokesman for the National Rally pleaded for French citizens to be consulted on current social issues in the proposed law on bioethics, known as the “PMA” [procréation médicalement assistée] as well as the “GPA” [la gestation pour autrui] which means gestational surrogacy of surrogate motherhood.
“We will obviously be opposed to the PMA and the GPA,” he said, justifying his comments by adding that “all that is technologically possible is not always humanly desirable and sometimes for a society to work, it must know how to set limits”.
For the MEP: “There is no right to the child, but there is a child’s right and the first of his rights is to have both a father and a mother”. He explained: “The interest of the child when the child grows up is to know both his father and his mother and the PMA would question this right”.
He attacked the notion of surrogacy too. “Are we expanding to all, knowing that it would mechanically open the door to surrogacy” because “the judges will explain that there is discrimination between male and female homosexual couples?”
Bardella said that “issues as essential as the PMA and the GPA must be put to a referendum because that would allow a debate and I think this is the fairest way to consider whether or not, the French believe that it is an advance or not”.
« La #PMA remet en cause le droit de l'enfant à avoir un père et une mère, repères essentiels, et ouvre mécaniquement la porte à la GPA. Cela me pose un problème. Ces sujets sociétaux devraient pouvoir être tranchés par les Français par référendum ! » @LCI pic.twitter.com/y6XiWr2B1G
— Jordan Bardella (@J_Bardella) July 24, 2019
But with the inclination of the French executive to ignore referendum outcomes, it is easy to understand why the idea of Jordan Bardella will not be heard by the presidential party.
The referendum of 2016 was buried by the Macron government when a clear majority voted in favour of an airport project in Notre-Dame-des-Landes.
The supporters of Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport was furious as a result. “If we do not respect the results of the 2016 referendum, it would be a denial of democracy,” the former Prime Minister and former Mayor of Nantes Jean-Marc Ayrault told LCI.
It came as a huge blow to participatory democracy after the local referendum was simply dumped by the presidential party. “A President of the Republic is a man who respects democracy and the decision of the people,” said the spokesman for the Republicans, Guillaume Peltier.
But Christophe Castaner shrugged off the complaints about the referendum being ignored: “In general, Emmanuel Macron has already assumed to be able to change his mind when there are new elements”.