Gay and single parents in France could soon get the right to IVF or artificial insemination in their own country.

French MPs have started working on updating the country's bioethics laws, which if adopted, could change many women's lives.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced in June that the government would present a bill to parliament in September- a campaign pledge from President Emmanuel Macron.

Currently, in France medically assisted reproduction techniques are available only to heterosexual couples with fertility problems who are married or have lived together for at least two years.

In countries such as the UK and Spain the procedures are open to all women.

Gay marriage was legalised in France in 2013 after a lengthy and fractious parliamentary debate accompanied by mass street protests and a spike in homophobic insults and physical assaults.

In 2017, France’s highest bioethics body, the National Consultative Ethics Committee, ruled that access to medically assisted reproduction should be expanded to include single women and lesbian couples.

But the bill was postponed several times and whilst LGBT activists now welcome the change, some fear a return to the hostile climate of the same-sex marriage debate.

The government is also trying to reassure people that the proposed bioethics law will not make surrogate motherhood legal in France.

WATCH: Guillaume Desjardins explains how the laws cover many themes: