PARIS — Gwendoline Desarménien wanted to have a baby. But as a single woman in France, she was by law denied access to in vitro fertilization.

And so Desarménien drove from her home in Montpellier across the border into Spain, where she found a clinic and a hotel where she could stay during her treatment.

The expedition was expensive, costing Desarménien, a human resources officer of moderate means, about $6,600. But one of the hardest parts, she said, was feeling that her country thought she was doing something wrong.

“All these restrictions that we have show a lack of an open spirit — that we still have difficulty evolving and modernizing,” said Desarménien, 43, whose daughter is now 1½ . “I think French society has difficulty realizing that the family isn’t just a father and a mother. And if we are in the process of advancing, it is slowly.”

President Emmanuel Macron is trying to encourage that advancement by changing French law on reproductive technology. It’s his most significant social initiative to date. And it would bring France in line with what is legal and routine in many other European Union countries. Ten E.U. nations permit the treatments for single women and lesbian couples, and seven others allow them for single women but not lesbian couples.

“The criterion that defines a family is the love that unites a parent and child,” Health Minister Agnès Buzyn said when introducing the bill in Parliament.

But the effort has produced a backlash — which should be visible in protests planned for Sunday in Paris and across the nation. Read more via Washington Post