Paris train stations have been told to put back two posters against assisted procreation that social media protests prompted the city's mayor to order removed but a court then reinstated in a summary judgment.
The pro-life group Alliance Vita launched the campaign ahead of the expected Senate approval this month of a new bioethics law voted by the National Assembly in October that will legalise assisted procreation procedures for lesbian couples and single women.
The group has consistently argued that children need both a father and a mother.
One poster with a man's face simply said society would progress by recognising paternity, and the other with a woman's face said the same for maternity. A third poster, which was not contested, showed a disabled child in a wheelchair and appealed for respect for difference. None of them mentioned the bioethics law.
When the posters went up on New Year’s Eve, critics promptly charged on social media that they violated France's official laïcité secularism that requires public services like transport to be neutral spaces.
Some suggested they could violate a new law against “obstruction of abortion,” making a link to Alliance Vita’s long-standing opposition to abortion that was also not mentioned on the posters.
Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo, running for reelection in March, tweeted that she was "shocked and outraged" by the posters and demanded they be withdrawn. They disappeared.
But the court found no law was broken. Alliance Vita general director Tugdual Derville hailed the court’s summary judgment as “a victory for free speech over the thought police”.
When the court ordered them replaced, Hidalgo issued a second tweet urging the ad agency involved to "use all possible legal means to put a definitive end to this campaign”. The ad agency involved has appealed the summary judgment.