For three years, Charlotte Ngoma, 38, has been fighting for a right refused to her in France: to continue her medically assisted procreation career (PMA) started in 2022, despite the death of her husband. This week, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has agreed to examine its request, a decisive step in this intimate fight which could well change French law.
A love story extended by a parental project
In December 2023, Charlotte lost Jocelyn, her husband, swept away by esophagus cancer. Together, they wanted to create a family, and had started a PMA course. Three embryos had been frozen, they are now kept at the Caen hospital center. But after the death of her spouse, Charlotte no longer has the right to access it: the law in France prohibits the PMA post-mortem.
Driven by the Biomedicine Agency, then by the Caen administrative court and the Council of State, it never renounced. “We finally take my business seriously”she blown after learning that the ECHR opened her file. The institution even invited France and the complainant to “find an amicable agreement ” before November 28. A first breach in this legal wall.
French law, closes on the ban
Charlotte is not the first widow to express the wish of a PMA post mortem. But since the first laws of bioethics of 1994, France has maintained a firm principle: the PMA is interrupted if one of the members of the couple dies. The revision of 2021, which widened the PMA to couples of women and single women, did not change this ban.
The law here is motivated by 3 major arguments:
- The consent of the deceasedimpossible to check after his death;
- The well-being of the childwhich would be born without father “by choice”;
- Inheritance questionsthe law does not recognize children designed more than ten months after the death of the parent.
However, some countries like Spain authorize the PMA post-mortem, and several French parliamentarians now wish to reopen the debate.
Between the desire for a child and the work of mourning
For Charlotte, this fight goes beyond maternity. “Already, there is the injury of death. And there, we are imposed on a double mourning: that of the child we wanted”she says on TF1. She is not alone: other women, confronted with the same situation, recognize themselves in her history and contact her.
Virginie Rio, co-founder of the Bamp collective, who supports the PMA’s journeys, underlines the injustice felt and also points to absurdity: “To say to women: ‘You can no longer use the embryos created with your spouse, but you can use the donation of a stranger’ … Humanly, it is not suitable. “
An act between compensation and freedom
For psychologist Amélie Boukhobza, the subject is complex. This approach cannot be reduced to a simple desire for maternity. It translates something deeper. “”Behind this desire for a child, there is the desire to keep a link living: that of the husband who has disappeared, but also that of the couple and the shared history ” he recognizes. The child’s project thus becomes an extension of love, a way of maintaining Jocelyn’s presence in Charlotte’s life.
But this will, if it is powerful, can also be ambivalent. What the law fears today. “The danger would be for this child to become a substitute for the missing husband, locked in an impossible place: that of filling the absence”warns the psychologist. In this case, the child would carry an overly heavy burden, that of repairing a loss.
Conversely, she continues, if Charlotte manages to welcome the child as a singular being, heir to a story but free to trace his, then this project is nothing morbid. On the contrary : “It is a way of reinventing life from the lack, of creating a presence in the absence. “
A case that questions our relationship to mourning
Being born from a disappeared father therefore does not have to be a trauma for our psychologist. “”It all depends on the story that Charlotte will build for this future child. Tell him one day: “You were born from the love we shared, even after his death” is to inscribe it in a clear and loving truth “. The psychologist insists: “The children welcome the truth, as long as it is not disguised in a lie or saturated with unsaid. “
Basically, this story questions our collective relationship with mourning: should we cut net and turn the page, or can we continue to invent with the shadow of the absent? Charlotte’s approach shows that it is possible to associate loss and creation, dead and life, without necessarily sinking into the tragic. A decision that should actually be made on a case -by -case basis.
A case with national repercussions
Charlotte’s file may well become a school case. The ECDH’s decision, expected in the coming months, could not only change the fate of this woman, but also reopen a social debate in France.
Should we maintain a strict prohibition, in the name of legal coherence and the ethical framework? Or adapt the law to the developments of families and to the realities of mourning in love?
Charlotte continues to believe that her parental project remains alive. “It’s not just a business of biology, she said. It is a matter of love and the future. “