The measures announced by Emmanuel Macron to boost the birth rate made Sandrine Rousseau jump. The elected feminist insists on the freedom of each woman to have children or not.
Has Emmanuel Macron gone too far by considering a pro-natalist policy, a “demographic rearmament” and “birth leave” to encourage more French men and women to have children? In the opinion of several left-wing elected officials and feminist associations, yes. The environmentalist deputy of Paris Sandrine Rousseau was also offended by what some consider to be a “natalist injunction”: “The question of birth rate, we have the impression that it is a kind of state affair […], women’s uteruses are not a state affair”, she said in the morning show on TF1, this Thursday, January 18.
“Every woman is free to choose to have children or not to have them” and “any decision is legitimate” assured the Parisian elected official in response to the concern expressed by Emmanuel Macron during his press conference on January 16 . The Head of State highlighted the number of births recorded in 2023, which is the lowest in France since 1946 following the Second World War. But Sandrine Rousseau establishes another parallel in relation to the old pronatalist policies: “These are speeches that we saw in the worst periods of our nation, when we took women’s bellies as something of the order of public policy where we had to rebuild the population, create children.” However, pronatalist measures in 2024 are anachronistic in the eyes of the MP because “there is no national issue in there being children”.
The “demographic rearmament” mentioned by Emmanuel Macron is far from being a priority for the environmentalist and feminist activist who believes that “there are enough humans in society”. Even so, indirectly encouraging or enjoining French people and especially French women to have children has no place for the elected official: “Women do absolutely what they want with their bodies. I want to say it again very firmly.”