France Abortion Law: Women’s rights organisations hailed France’s historic decision to enshrine the right to abortion in its constitution on Monday, while anti-abortion groups sharply denounced the move.
Unified Parliamentary Vote
In a rare joint vote of the two houses of parliament held under the gilded ceilings of Versailles Palace, just outside of Paris, senators and members of parliament overwhelmingly supported the measure, voting 780 votes to 72.
A massive screen presented the results of the referendum, and as the Eiffel Tower blinked in the backdrop, abortion rights supporters assembled in central Paris cheered and applauded. The statement “MyBodyMyChoice” was flashed.
Abortion Acceptance in France
In France, as in many other countries, abortion rights are more universally accepted. According to polls, almost 80% of French people support the legalisation of abortion. Before the vote, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal told MPs, “We’re sending a message to all women: your body belongs to you and no one can decide for you.”
Since a regulation passed in 1974, which was highly denounced at the time, women in France have been legally allowed to undergo abortions. However, proponents of women’s constitutional rights to abortion have pushed for France to be the first nation to formally safeguard such rights in its fundamental legislation, following the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn the Roe v. Wade ruling.
Concerns Amid Global Trends
“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 of the rights organisation Fondation des Femmes. “There’s a lot of emotion, as a feminist activist, also as a woman,” Slimani said.
The French constitution’s Article 34, which states that “the law determines the conditions in which a woman has the guaranteed freedom to have recourse to an abortion,” was solidified on Monday. “France is at the forefront,” stated Yael Braun-Pivet, the leader of the lower chamber of parliament and a member of the centrist party of French President Emmanuel Macron.
Criticism from Marine Le Pen
However, the decision did not come without criticism. The far-right leader Marine Le Pen claimed that because the country has a strong majority in favour of abortion rights, Macron was exploiting it as a political football. Before the Versailles vote, Le Pen told reporters, “We will vote to include it in the Constitution because we have no problem with that.” She also argued that calling it a historic move was overly dramatic because “no one is putting the right to abortion at risk in France.”
Abortion Opponents Express Discontent
Campaigners against abortion saw this as a setback, according to Association of Catholic Families head Pascale Moriniere. “It’s (also) a defeat for women,” she said, “and, of course, for all the children who cannot see the day.” According to Moriniere, the right to an abortion does not need to be protected by the constitution.
“We imported a debate that is not French since the United States was first to remove that from law with the repeal of Roe v. Wade,” she said. “There was an effect of panic from the feminist movements, which wished to engrave this on the marble of the constitution.”