French Senate Bans Posting of Pro-Life Information Online

[Valin]

National Review/The Corner:

Alexandra DeSanctis

December 7, 2016

 

The French Senate today adopted a bill criminalizing the posting of pro-life information online, a measure that was passed by the French National Assembly just last week. Violators face a maximum of two years in prison and over $30,000 in fines. The measure makes it a crime for pro-life individuals or activists to obstruct a woman’s lawful decision to have an abortion, or to cause her guilt after the fact. Its text criminalizes:

 

the act of preventing or trying to prevent to practice or learn about an abortion or prior acts . . . by any means, including by disseminating or transmitting electronically or online, allegations, statements looking to intentionally mislead, as a deterrent, the characteristics or the medical consequences of a voluntary interruption pregnancy.

 

Furthermore, the bill defines obstruction not only as the physical effort to block an abortion clinic, for example, but also “psychological obstacles,” which it defines as:

 

moral and psychological pressure, threats or intimidation against medical and non-medical working in these institutions, women from there suffer or learn about an abortion or the environment of the past.

The translation of these portions of the bill are somewhat rough, but many analysts agree that the bill will be interpreted to criminalize any person or website that posts information regarding alternatives to abortion, or even that espouses the Christian belief that the church considers abortion to be immoral.

 

(Snip)

 

This news comes in the wake of another recent controversy, in which the French State Council banned an ad depicting children with Down syndrome talking about their happy lives, meant to appeal to mothers of children with the same condition. The council ruled that the video could not air on French television because the children’s smiles would “disturb the conscience of women who had lawfully made different personal life choices” — in other words, because seeing them happy would upset women who had aborted their own Down syndrome children.