French lawmakers are poised to solidify the right to abortion in the country’s constitution, a groundbreaking move backed by overwhelming public support.
A congress of both houses of parliament convening in Versailles, commencing at 3:30 pm (1430 GMT), is anticipated to secure the three-fifths majority required for the amendment, following initial resistance in the right-leaning Senate.
Should the congress endorse the amendment, France will stand as the sole nation globally to safeguard the right to terminate a pregnancy in its fundamental law.
President Emmanuel Macron committed last year to embedding abortion — legalized in France since 1975 — in the constitution, following the United States Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn the long-standing right to the procedure, empowering individual American states to restrict or prohibit it.
In January, France’s lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, overwhelmingly backed the inclusion of abortion as a “guaranteed freedom” in the constitution.
The upper house, the Senate, echoed the sentiment on Wednesday.
The bill is now slated to clear the final hurdle of a combined vote of both chambers during a rare joint session at the former royal residence of the Palace of Versailles.
Few anticipate any obstacles in reaching the requisite supermajority, given the substantial support exceeding the three-fifths threshold in both prior ballots.
– ‘Woke us up’ –
As political campaigning commenced in earnest in 1971, Claudine Monteil, head of the Femmes Monde (Women in the World) association, reflected to AFP, “we could never have imagined that the right to abortion would one day be inscribed into the constitution”.
Monteil, the youngest signatory to the “Manifesto of the 343” in 1971, a petition where 343 women admitted to undergoing illegal abortions, recounted the time when an estimated 700,000 to 800,000 women terminated pregnancies annually.
Abortion was legalized in France in 1975 through legislation championed by health minister Simone Veil, a women’s rights icon accorded the rare honor of burial at the Pantheon following her demise in 2018.
Leah Hoctor, from the Center for Reproductive Rights, highlighted France’s potential to establish “the first explicit broad constitutional provision of its kind, not just in Europe, but also globally”.
While some countries allude to the right, others explicitly mention abortion in their constitution but only permit it under specific circumstances, Hoctor explained.
– Anti-abortion protest –
A vast majority of the French public support the initiative to grant extra protection to the right to abortion.
According to a November 2022 survey by the French polling group IFOP, 86 percent of French people endorse its inclusion in the constitution.
Left-wing and centrist politicians have welcomed the move, while right-wing senators have expressed private concerns about opposing it, with one stating her daughters would “no longer come for Christmas” if she objected.
Abortion opponents, largely marginalized in the push for constitutional change, have organized a protest in Versailles on Monday afternoon.
Catholic bishops have called for a day of “fasting and prayer” to encourage the French to “rediscover the taste for life-giving it, receiving it, accompanying it, having and bringing up children”.
Macron praised the Senate’s “decisive step” and promptly convened the parliamentary congress, marking the first such gathering since 2008, when lawmakers approved wide-ranging reforms under former president Nicolas Sarkozy, including limiting presidents to two terms and enhancing safeguards for press independence and freedom.
