French Presidential Candidate Is First to Give Birth During Campaign

Marine Tondelier, national secretary of the Greens and a candidate in the 2027 presidential election, gave birth to a son on September 18 in Lens, in northern France. At 40, she became the first candidate in French political history to campaign for the presidency while pregnant, and then to give birth in the middle of an active race for the Elysee.

Her son Leon was born just hours after Tondelier attended a rare meeting at the Elysee Palace, where President Emmanuel Macron warned French political leaders about the intensifying risk of Russian hybrid attacks. Tondelier had kept up her campaign duties right up until the final moments before the birth.

Speaking to AFP, the Greens candidate said she would be working differently for a while as she tried to figure out how to balance a presidential campaign with a newborn, whose health and well being come first. She also said she hoped her personal experience would help draw greater attention, in public debate, to issues surrounding infertility and motherhood.

The birth comes as the presidential campaign enters a particularly dense phase, with the socialist and democratic primary set for October and a separate, further left primary in which Tondelier herself is involved alongside other Green and left wing figures. Her unprecedented situation has also revived debate over the place of parenthood in French political life, in a country where few elected women have so far carried a pregnancy alongside major national responsibilities.

By choosing to make the birth public while continuing to carry out her duties, Tondelier is turning her own experience into a political argument, months ahead of a first round in which the French left is still trying to unite behind a single candidacy.

This account draws on reporting by WION and Free Malaysia Today.