Mouvement français pour le planning familial

SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND RIGHTS AND THE MFPF

I - THE MFPF

The Mouvement Français Pour le Planning Familial (French Movement for Family Planning) was created in 1956. It is an APF member of the IPPF, which is composed today of 67 local associations, present in most French departments, and a National Confederation.
Its history and its development are profoundly linked to the development of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in France.

Its activities are mainly centred on practice on the ground.

Its 8000 members and its 400 employees, ensure the staffing of offices open to everyone, mainly young people and women.
These 120 offices are establishments which provide information in the field of sexuality, fecundity, contraception and the prevention of sexually transmissible diseases, as well as violence, or else Family Planning and Education Centres, which can offer medical and contraceptive consultations to young minors, free of charge.
In 2000, 125,000 people were seen.

In liaison with these structures, the militants and the employees of the MFPF offer, in the framework of educational or social structures, information and education interventions in the matter of sexuality and the prevention of sexist behaviour. In 2000, 150,000 young people participated in such events, in the framework of National Education.

The MFPF is an approved training organisation for training the personnel of these structures.
It also develops actions and training aimed at professionals and its partner associations, in order to transmit its practices and its methodology to all those who are confronted by questions of sexuality and prevention in their professional or associative activities.

Listening to young people and women, the analysis of their questions, or their problems, enables the MFPF to bring these to the attention of politicians and public authorities, as well as health organisations, regularly and often effectively.
The MFPF is, today, a network of associations, which has a social and educational practice but which has become a partner of decision makers.

The main activities of local associations are aimed at the publics in their area. However, through the priority given to young people and women in difficulty and the construction of partnerships on the ground, the MFPF is a network which participates in local development.

Indeed, by its objective of increasing the autonomy of each individual, and of free educational choice, the MFPF contributes to the taking of the initiative by everyone, in the different domains of society.

This capacity has been materialising for several years, in proposals emanating from municipalities or departments, asking the associations to participate actively in twinning between French communities and communities in the South, in order to construct, in this way, real actions of decentralised co-operation.

II - THE DIFFERENT EPOCHS

Up to 1967

The MFPF was created, in 1956, to obtain the abrogation of the law of 1920, which condemned, in the criminal code, any practice and any information on contraception and abortion.
Defyring the law, the MFPF opened its first centres in Grenoble and Paris in 1961.

Numerous centres multiplied throughout France, and the public flocked to them. Confronted with the scale of this demand, association volunteers developed a pedagogy of sexual education, and mobilised networks of doctors prescribing contraceptives, which had to be obtained abroad.

In 1967, senator Lucien Neuwirth had a law on modern contraception voted.
This law abolished the prohibition on the sale of contraceptives. It recognised the necessity of organising access to information and sexual education. Finally it created Centres of Family Education and Planning, which offered information, advice, medical consultations and prescriptions for contraceptives, for everyone, young people and adults.

7 years had to be waited for the implementing decrees, which made these structures, which are still the basis of the French system, the first centres open to all, and offering all its services to young minors free of charge and anonymously.

The seventies

The events of 1968, the explosion of feminist struggles and the liberalising of contraception imposed the feminist watchword "a child if I want, when I want".
The MFPF, the forum for young people and women, then advanced its objectives, by recognising the right to abortion as a fundamental woman's right. It also emphasised that the curbs on women's rights over their bodies, was not only political, but resided in the roles of the sexes, constructed by society.

New illegal abortion practices by the Karman method, in partnership with militant doctors, became general and enabled Simone Veil, then minister of Health, to have voted a law, in 1975, accepting voluntary terminations of pregnancies under certain conditions : up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, requirement of prior consultation, requirement of parental authorisation for minors, restrictive conditions for foreigners...

However, it was recognised that the woman, alone, decided on the carrying out of the termination, without need of medical authorisation.
Despite the curbs and the dysfunctions, the Veil law therefore affirmed women's rights.

At the sanie time, the Minister of National Education took a first, although very modest, step to take responsibility for sexual education in schools.
The experience of the network of departmental associations, and the implication of teaching personnel in them, served as an example for this taking of responsibility by the "National Education" institution.

The eighties and nineties

These years were marked by the putting into place of the Veil law, which encountered much inertia and opposition on the part of certain hospital establishments, public or private, and on the part of numerous doctors.
The Family Planning and Education Centres multiplied, and the MFPF opened around thirty throughout the territory, in the hope of demonstrating de-medicalised "good practice".

Under the pressure of associative circles, a national media campaign on contraception was undertaken by the Ministries. This action should have been repeated regularly, but this was not done.

At the same time, numerous professionals and social services recognised the necessity, in their practice, of taking responsibility for questions of sexuality and prevention, especially with the irruption of HIV. They then brought pressure on the MFPF to transfer its training and methodology to them.

Between 1981 et 1984, 2000 people, participated in "awareness of questions of sexuality" courses established by the MFPF.

However, this decade was deeply marked by the irruption of "anti abortion" commandos, mostly from the United States. In the beginning, they violently attacked hospitals and clinics. The government, with VŽronique Neiertz, was obliged to have a law voted against the "offence of hindrance of abortion".

Ill - AND NOW ?

In the nineties, 2 facts marked the local associations and the Confederation and made them evolve : the "necessary" evolution of the Veil law - the policies of equality between men and women, and the constitutional amendment on Parity.
Confronted by an extremely diverse application of the Veil law, the government would have preferred policies of practical improvement, rather that to have a new law voted.

However, every day, the departmental associations saw women, who were over 10 weeks pregnant, young minors who could not obtain the authorisation from their parents for a termination... Each year, 5,000 women, whose pregnancy exceeded the legal limits left to obtain an abortion abroad, often in very painful conditions, both physical and financial.

The partnership of the MFPF with Members of Parliament, which had resulted in the creation by Parliament of a "Parliamentary Delegation for Women's Rights and Equality", and with all our partner associations and syndicates, succeeded in changing the government, which even reacted strongly when faced with a campaign of opponents who thought women incapable of making the right choice.

The Veil law was thus amended. Voluntary termination is no longer in the criminal code - The pre-termination social interviews are no longer obligatory - Young minors can be accompanied by an adult, so as not to be alone during the termination, but they decide themselves, and their termination is free and anonymous in this case - On the other hand the delays have only been extended from 10 to 12 weeks.

Moreover, confronted with the persistence of adolescent pregnancies and terminations, it was decided by the Ministers, to carry out national campaigns on contraception at regular intervals...

Courageously, the ministers decided to allow young minors to obtain Emergency Contraception; anonymously, free of charge and without medical prescription. National Education even decided, that its schools could deliver it themselves to young girls...

In addition, HIV infection attained many more women than men.
Finally, officials realised that men and women are not affected in the same way by the transmission.

The analysis of gender was, then, taken into account, and showed that various factors aggravate the transmission, and that these factors, particularly violence, accentuate the incapacity of these vulnerable women, to take matters in hand and to decide for themselves. Hence, in partnership with the Ministry of Health, an ambitious programme called "Reduction of Sexual Risks" was established with the departmental associations of the MFPF, aimed at groups of women in difficulty.

Finally, taking into account in policies of the analyses of the social relations of the sexes, enables the necessary link between the demands of Man/Woman equality and the sexual approach to the problems of society to be made today, on the ground.

It is now necessary to have a global approach to prevention : if one wishes a person to understand what he/she wants, on the one hand, and the existing constraints, on the other, in order to be able to make his/her own choices, he/she must not be shut into a particular problem: for example, it is no longer possible to isolate one's employment and/or educational problems from one's capacity to decide one's sexual life and/or one's reproductive health ...

These new approaches to prevention have surely had an impact on the increase in the requests, which are made to the MFPF associations to take their place in the decentralised cooperation approaches.
The relations between associations, women in general, in consolidating themselves provoke a common elaboration of multi-component projects (economy, girls' education, sexuality/contraception...)

The MFPF hopes that several NGO's, whether or not specialised in rights and health in the matter of sexuality and procreation, will be interested in working in partnership with it.

Françoise LAURANT - MFPF President
September 2001