France Set To Make Abortion Constitutional Right

On Monday, French lawmakers are set to enshrine abortion rights in the country’s constitution, a world first that has received widespread public approval.

A congress of both chambers of parliament in Versailles, beginning at 3:30 p.m. (1430 GMT), should find the three-fifths majority required for the reform after it overcame initial opposition in the right-leaning Senate.

If the motion is approved by Congress, France will be the only country in the world with a core legislation protecting the right to abortion.

President Emmanuel Macron promised last year to enshrine abortion, which has been legal in France since 1975, in the constitution after the United States Supreme Court abolished the 50-year-old right to the surgery in 2022, allowing individual states to ban or restrict it.

In January, France’s National Assembly unanimously approved granting abortion a “guaranteed freedom” under the constitution.

The higher chamber, the Senate, followed suit on Wednesday.

The plan is now anticipated to pass the final obstacle of a combined vote by both chambers during a rare joint session at the Palace of Versailles, the old royal palace.

Few predict a problem obtaining the required supermajority after the three-fifths mark was largely exceeded in both prior ballots.

‘Woke us up’

Claudine Monteil, head of the Femmes Monde (Women in the World) movement, told AFP that when political agitation began in earnest in 1971, “we could never have imagined that the right to abortion would one day be written into the constitution”.

Monteil was the youngest signatory to the “Manifesto of the 343”, a 1971 petition signed by 343 women who admitted to illegally terminating a pregnancy.

At the time, an estimated 700,000 to 800,000 women were aborted annually.

Abortion became legal in France in 1975 via a bill championed by health minister Simone Veil, a women’s rights icon who was given the unusual honor of being buried at the Pantheon after her death in 2018.

However, just a year before, in 1974, another prominent feminist, Simone de Beauvoir, cautioned that “a political, economic, or religious crisis” may jeopardize women’s rights, according to Monteil.

In this regard, “the behavior of the US Supreme Court did women all over the world a favor because it woke us up,” she stated.

According to Leah Hoctor of the Center for Reproductive Rights, France might provide “the first explicit broad constitutional provision of its kind, not just in Europe, but also globally”.

Chile included the right to elective abortion in a draft of a new progressive constitution for 2022, but voters rejected the legislation in a referendum.

Some countries refer to the right.

The Cuban constitution protects women’s “reproductive and sexual rights”.

Several Balkan governments have also inherited sections of the former Yugoslavia’s 1974 constitution, which stated that it was a human right to “decide on the birth of children”.

Other states clearly mention abortion in their constitutions, but only allow it under certain conditions, according to Hoctor.

 

Anti-abortion protest

The majority of the French populace supports the effort to strengthen abortion rights.

According to a November 2022 survey conducted by the French polling company IFOP, 86 percent of French citizens support inscribing it in the constitution.

Left-wing and centrist lawmakers have hailed the change, while right-wing senators have privately stated that they felt pressured to approve it.

One said her daughters would “no longer come for Christmas” if she opposed the change.

Abortion opponents, who have been virtually overlooked in the push for constitutional change, plan to demonstrate in Versailles on Monday afternoon.

Catholic bishops asked for a day of “fasting and prayer” to help the French “rediscover the taste for life-giving, receiving, accompanying, having, and raising children.”

On Wednesday, Macron praised the Senate’s “decisive step” and convened the parliamentary congress.

The last time a constitutional amendment was proposed was in 2008, when parliament had only recently passed broad reforms under former President Nicolas Sarkozy.

These amendments included restricting presidents to two terms in office and strengthening safeguards for press independence and freedom.

 

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