Hervé Saulignac, a PS deputy, tabled an amendment removing the period of abstinence imposed on homosexuals and bisexuals to donate blood.
Donating blood does not happen the same way depending on your sexual orientation. If you are a homosexual or bisexual man, in a monogamous couple or not, you must abstain from four months of sex before you can make this very beautiful gift. In the past, this abstinence was one year!
But for Hervé Saulignac, PS deputy from Ardèche, this rule must end. He therefore tabled, Thursday, June 25, an amendment to the bioethics law, of which he is one of the co-rapporteurs, signed by leftist deputies and LREM. This text seeks the abolition of the abstinence period.
"The criteria for selecting the donor cannot be based on the sex of the partner or partners with whom he has had sexual relations.", can we read in the amendment.
"I think this time it can do it. I opened the cosignatures amendment and received it from all parties, including LREM," said Hervé Saulignac in Liberation.
It should not be forgotten that before 2016, a homosexual or bisexual person could not donate blood. It was under the leadership of the former Minister of Health, Marisol Touraine, that this 1983 ban was lifted. But while putting the abstinence duration of twelve months.
In 2018, a first attempt at a bill "aimed at consolidating the French model of blood donation ", worn by the deputy LR Damien Abad, Hervé Saulignac had failed.
However adopted in committee, the amendment was finally rejected in session. The majority preferred to follow the advice of the government.
Clarified by Liberation, the Minister of Health at the time, Agnès Buzyn, would have preferred to act by decree and not by law. "Let’s not put into law selection criteria that would put us at risk one day from a new pathogen or risk of an epidemic, "she said.
"The abolition of this discrimination should be written in law today," summarizes the amendment to counter opponents' claims.
We will have to wait until July 6 to find out if the bioethics bill which is due to pass second reading in the National Assembly is approved, before being sent back to the Senate.