First pregnant candidate navigates presidential race
Marine Tondelier said campaigning while pregnant is a real challenge.
Text size
Share
Marine Tondelier said campaigning while pregnant is a real challenge.
Share
LA GUAIRA, Venezuela (AFP) — Greens leader Marine Tondelier is campaigning for the 2027 presidential race while pregnant, a first in France that is bringing infertility and motherhood into the political spotlight.
The 39-year-old, who is running to succeed President Emmanuel Macron in next year’s election, announced at the end of March that she was three months pregnant with a “miracle baby.”
The unplanned pregnancy followed a miscarriage and several unsuccessful attempts at assisted reproduction and in vitro fertilization, which had put her plans for another child on hold.
The left-wing candidate said the news left her feeling “dizzy,” but that the decision to continue campaigning was “never in doubt.”
Instead, she had to consider how to navigate the race as the first French politician to run for president while expecting.
She is doing so at a crucial stage in the campaign, with candidates on the left, center and right jostling for position just months before an election that may come down to a face-off with the far right.
‘Exhausting’
Tondelier said campaigning while pregnant “is a real challenge,” recalling having to vomit in train toilets while traveling to support fellow Greens in local elections.
But she has shown little sign of slowing down, traveling across France in an electric van in July while seven months pregnant and as the country grappled with a heatwave.
She only cut her journey short due to wildfires in southwest France, as the smoke is harmful to pregnant women.
“It’s exhausting,” Tondelier told Agence France-Presse at the time, though she said it was less so than being in Paris, where her attempt to organize a primary with the left-wing Socialist Party had failed.
Tondelier has advocated for a unified left-wing and Green front, but it remains unclear how many contenders the left will field.
According to polls, her candidacy faces an uphill battle, with recent results putting her in the single digits.
For now, she intends to press on despite any fatigue, telling La Tribune Dimanche newspaper she would campaign “as long as it’s reasonable.”
She said her run offered an opportunity to champion women’s health issues, including reproductive health and struggles with infertility.
Tondelier is also pushing for access to assisted reproductive technology and a test to screen embryos before implantation, which she underwent in Belgium because the procedure is banned in France, she told the newspaper.
Campaigning as an expectant mother has also allowed her to forge a different kind of connection with French voters, she said.
