France, on Monday (Mar 4) enshrined the right to abortion in its constitution after lawmakers voted in favour of an article which would give women the “guaranteed freedom” to get the medical procedure for terminating a pregnancy, making it the first country in the world to do so.
About the vote
A joint session of both the lower and upper houses of parliament was convened at the Palace of Versailles where the proposal gained a three-fifths supermajority by French lawmakers which was needed to make the change, with 780 votes in favour and 72 against it.
There was loud applause, cheering, and standing ovation at the joint session as most French lawmakers celebrated the final approval needed to make the right to abortion an explicit protection in the country’s constitution.
The change was also celebrated in central Paris where abortion rights activists had gathered and applauded as the Eiffel Tower was illuminated to mark the occasion and displayed the message “MyBodyMyChoice” after the vote.
Abortion rights are more widely accepted in France than in most other countries with recent polls indicating that 80 per cent of French people back the fact that abortion is legal.
President Emmanuel Macron described the move as “French pride” and said that it sends a “universal message”. He also announced a special public ceremony planned on International Women’s Day on March 8 to celebrate the move.
The vote on Monday has enshrined in Article 34 of the French constitution that “the law determines the conditions in which a woman has the guaranteed freedom to have recourse to an abortion”.
“We’re sending a message to all women: your body belongs to you and no one can decide for you,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal told lawmakers ahead of the vote urging them to pass the legislation. He added that this is a “fundamental step… A step that will go down in history.”
The measure had already been passed in both the Senate and the National Assembly. Notably, joint sessions are rare in France. Monday’s session is the first to be held to change the constitution since 2008.
Opposition and criticism
Right-wing leader Marine Le Pen accused Macron of passing the legislation to gain political points due to the large support for the right to abortion in France.
“We will vote to include it in the Constitution because we have no problem with that,” Le Pen told reporters ahead of Monday’s vote, but also called it an exaggeration since “no one is putting the right to abortion at risk in France.”
In his speech, the French PM spoke about how the right to abortion remains in “danger” across the world. “In one generation, one year, one week, you can go from one thing to the opposite,” said Attal referring to rights reversals in the US, Hungary and Poland.
Notably, it was the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v Wade which recognised a woman’s constitutional right to abortion that prompted activists in France to push French lawmakers.
“This right (to abortion) has retreated in the United States. And so nothing authorised us to think that France was exempt from this risk,” said Laura Slimani, from the Fondation des Femmes rights group, as quoted by Reuters.
Meanwhile, anti-abortion protesters gathered in Versailles near the palace to oppose the move.
Pascale Moriniere, the president of the Association of Catholic Families, told Reuters how the move marked a defeat for anti-abortion campaigners.
“It’s (also) a defeat for women…and, of course, for all the children who cannot see the day,” she said.
(With inputs from agencies)
