Mon, March 4, 2024
PARIS (AP) — French lawmakers on Monday overwhelmingly approved a bill that will enshrine a woman’s right to an abortion in France's constitution, a historic move designed to prevent the kind of rollback of abortion rights seen in the United States in recent years.
In an exceptional joint session of parliament convened at the Palace of Versailles, the bill was approved in a 780-72 vote. Abortion enjoys wide support in France across most of the political spectrum, and has been legal since 1975.
The vote makes France the first country to have a constitutional right to abortion since the former Yugoslavia inscribed it in its 1974 constitution. Serbia’s 2006 constitution carries on that spirit, stating that “everyone has the right to decide on childbirth.”
Nearly the entire hall in France stood in a long standing ovation, and many female legislators in the hall smiled broadly as they cheered. There were jubilant scenes of celebrations all over France as women’s rights activists hailed the measure promised by President Emmanuel Macron immediately following the Dobbs ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022.
Both houses of parliament, the National Assembly and the Senate, had already adopted a bill to amend Article 34 of the French Constitution to specify that “the law determines the conditions by which is exercised the freedom of women to have recourse to an abortion, which is guaranteed.”
In the lead up to the historic vote, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal addressed the 925 lawmakers gathered for the joint session in Versailles, and called on them to make France a leader in women's rights and set an example in defense of women's rights for countries around the world.
“We have a moral debt to women,” Attal said. He paid tribute to Simone Veil, a prominent legislator, former health minister and key feminist who in 1975 championed the bill that decriminalized abortion in France.
“We have a chance to change history,” Attal said in a moving and determined speech. “Make Simone Veil proud," he said to a standing ovation.
The lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, overwhelmingly approved the proposal in January. The Senate adopted the bill on Wednesday, clearing a key hurdle for legislation promised by Macron's government, intended to make “a woman’s right to have an abortion irreversible.”
A three-fifths majority in the joint session was required for the measure to be approved
None of France’s major political parties represented in parliament have questioned the right to abortion, including Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party and the conservative Republicans. However, some lawmakers have voted against inscribing abortion right into the constitution in previous votes in both houses.
Le Pen, who won a record number of seats in the National Assembly two years ago, said on Monday that her party will vote in favor of the bill but added that “there is no need to make this a historic day.”
The right to an abortion has broad support among the French public. A recent poll showed support at more than 80%, consistent with previous surveys. The same poll also showed that a solid majority of people are in favor of enshrining it in the constitution.
There were scenes of celebrations around France even before the joint parliamentary session began.
Sarah Durocher, a leader in the Family Planning movement, said Monday's vote is “a victory for feminists and a defeat for the anti-choice activists.”
With the right to an abortion added to the constitution, it will be much harder to prevent women from voluntarily terminating a pregnancy in France, women’s rights and equality activists said.
“We increased the level of protection to this fundamental right,” said Anne-Cécile Mailfert of the Women’s Foundation. “It’s a guarantee for women today and in the future to have the right to abort in France.”
The government argued in its introduction to the bill that the right to abortion is threatened in the United States, where the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned a 50-year-old ruling that used to guarantee it.
“Unfortunately, this event is not isolated: in many countries, even in Europe, there are currents of opinion that seek to hinder at any cost the freedom of women to terminate their pregnancy if they wish,” the introduction to the French legislation says.
The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to strip women of the right to abortion has reverberated across Europe’s political landscape, forcing the issue back into public debate in France at a time of political upheaval.
Mathilde Philip-Gay, a law professor and a specialist in French and American constitutional law, warned against easing the pressure on legislators for women's rights as far-right parties — determined to curtail women's rights — gain political influence and are elected to form governments around Europe and elsewhere.
"It may not be an issue in France, where a majority of people support abortion,” Philip-Gay said. “But those same people may one day vote for a far-right government, and what happened in the U.S. can happen elsewhere in Europe, including in France.”
Inscribing abortion into the French Constitution "will make it harder for abortion opponents of the future to challenge these rights, but it won't prevent them from doing it in the long run, with the right political strategy,” Philip-Gay added.
"It only takes a moment for everything we thought that we have achieved to fade away,” said Yael Braun-Pivet, the first female president of the French parliament, in her address to the joint session.
Amending the constitution is a laborious process and a rare event in France. Since it was enacted in 1958, the French Constitution has been amended 17 times. The last time was in 2008, when parliament was awarded more powers and French citizens were granted the right to bring their grievances to the Constitutional Court.
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Barbara Surk reported from Nice.
Barbara Surk And Nicolas Garriga, The Associated Press
French lawmakers gather for a historic vote that will make abortion a constitutional right
BY BY BARBARA SURK, ASSOCIATED PRESS - 03/04/24
A bill to enshrine a woman’s right to an abortion in the French constitution goes to a historic vote on Monday, as lawmakers gather for a joint session of parliament at the Palace of Versailles.
The measure was promised by President Emmanuel Macron following a rollback of abortion rights in court rulings in the United States.
Macron’s government wants Article 34 of the French constitution amended to specify that “the law determines the conditions by which is exercised the freedom of women to have recourse to an abortion, which is guaranteed.”
The lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, overwhelmingly approved the proposal in January. The Senate adopted the bill on Wednesday, clearing a key hurdle for legislation promised by Macron’s government, intended to make “a woman’s right to have an abortion irreversible.”
The measure must be approved by a three-fifths majority in the joint session.
None of France’s major political parties represented in parliament has questioned the right to abortion, which was decriminalized in 1975. With both houses of parliament having adopted the bill, Monday’s joint session at the Palace of Versailles is expected to be largely a formality.
The government argued in its introduction to the bill that the right to abortion is threatened in the United States, where the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned a 50-year-old ruling that used to guarantee it.
“Unfortunately, this event is not isolated: in many countries, even in Europe, there are currents of opinion that seek to hinder at any cost the freedom of women to terminate their pregnancy if they wish,” the introduction to the French legislation says.
France moves to make abortion a constitutional right amid rollbacks in US and Europe
The constitutional revision, backed by an overwhelming majority of the population, put conservatives and the far right in a tough spot.
The measure sailed through both chambers of the French parliament and is expected to pass | Mathilde Kaczkowksi/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
A bill to enshrine a woman’s right to an abortion in the French constitution goes to a historic vote on Monday, as lawmakers gather for a joint session of parliament at the Palace of Versailles.
The measure was promised by President Emmanuel Macron following a rollback of abortion rights in court rulings in the United States.
Macron’s government wants Article 34 of the French constitution amended to specify that “the law determines the conditions by which is exercised the freedom of women to have recourse to an abortion, which is guaranteed.”
The lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, overwhelmingly approved the proposal in January. The Senate adopted the bill on Wednesday, clearing a key hurdle for legislation promised by Macron’s government, intended to make “a woman’s right to have an abortion irreversible.”
The measure must be approved by a three-fifths majority in the joint session.
None of France’s major political parties represented in parliament has questioned the right to abortion, which was decriminalized in 1975. With both houses of parliament having adopted the bill, Monday’s joint session at the Palace of Versailles is expected to be largely a formality.
The government argued in its introduction to the bill that the right to abortion is threatened in the United States, where the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned a 50-year-old ruling that used to guarantee it.
“Unfortunately, this event is not isolated: in many countries, even in Europe, there are currents of opinion that seek to hinder at any cost the freedom of women to terminate their pregnancy if they wish,” the introduction to the French legislation says.
France moves to make abortion a constitutional right amid rollbacks in US and Europe
The constitutional revision, backed by an overwhelming majority of the population, put conservatives and the far right in a tough spot.
The measure sailed through both chambers of the French parliament and is expected to pass | Mathilde Kaczkowksi/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
MARCH 4, 2024
BY VICTOR GOURY-LAFFONT
PARIS — France is set to become the first country to enshrine the freedom to have an abortion in its constitution — an effort by President Emmanuel Macron to send a strong message of support for reproductive rights and, at the same time, score political points at the expense of a resurgent far right.
The amendment will be added to the French constitution if three-fifths of parliamentarians from the upper and lower houses approve the bill during an extraordinary voting session being held on Monday in Versailles.
The measure sailed through both chambers of the French parliament and is expected to pass.
Abortion rights are widely supported in France, and limiting them was not a publicly debated issue. While the French left has for years wanted to add a constitutional safeguard to an abortion, until 2022 most lawmakers believed such a move was unnecessary given the existing guarantees for women seeking an abortion.
Macron's government was spurred to action by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, giving individual states the green light to outlaw the procedure.
“It’s impossible to tell if abortion rights won’t come into question in the future in France,” Mathilde Panot, head of the left-wing France Unbowed group in the National Assembly, told POLITICO. “It’s important to capitalize when we have public on our side.”
She said that Macron only acted thanks to “the work of feminist organizations and parliamentarians.”
“He can boast, but it’s first and foremost our victory,” Panot said.
Splitting the right
While abortion is legal in most of the European Union, right-wing populists across the bloc have implemented policies designed to restrict or make more complicated access to the procedure. In Hungary, pregnant people are made to listen to the pulse of the fetus, sometimes described as a "fetal heartbeat," a term medical professionals reject, from the very first ultrasound. Poland outlawed abortion in most cases while the right-wing Law and Justice party was in power, though new Prime Minister Donald Tusk is working on overturning the ban.
Officially, the far-right National Rally supports the right to end a pregnancy, but abortion remains a divisive topic in its ranks. Of its 88 MPs, 46, including three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, voted in favor of the constitutional revision. Twelve voted against; 14 abstained.
The National Rally is currently surging in the polls ahead of the June European election. A recent poll showed the pro-Macron list for the European election 12 percentage points behind the French far-right standard bearer and only seven ahead of the Socialist-backed list led by Raphaël Glucksmann.
Macron's rightwards pivot on issues including immigration has led to concerns within his own camp of seeing the left-end of the president's voter base turning towards other options on the center-left
.
Macron's government was spurred to action by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, giving individual states the green light to outlaw the procedure | Kiran Ridley/AFP via Getty Images
By backing a hugely popular proposal a few months ahead of an election, Macron gave conservative and far-right leaders a headache while courting support from the left.
Enshrining abortion rights into the constitution was a way of "uniting against conservatives and reactionaries," Christopher Weissberg, an MP in the pro-Macron ranks told POLITICO. "It helped build consensus and show ourselves under a progressive light."
Weissberg, who represents French citizens living in Canada and the U.S. said he had seen concern among his stateside constituents after the Roe v. Wade reversal, with some even reconsidering their future in the country
Increasing polarization
An IFOP poll from 2022 showed 81 percent of respondents in favor of adding the right to have an abortion to the constitution, with majority support across party lines. Only 10 percent said they had a negative opinion on abortion being legal.
"When abortion was legalized [in 1975], the French population was split on the matter," Pierre-Hadrien Bartoli, an analyst for the OpinionWay polling institute, said, pointing to the much higher prevalence of religious practice then compared to the now widely secularized French society. "The opinion that it [abortion] should be banned in all cases has almost disappeared.”
The increasing polarization of France's politics occasionally led the issue to reappear in the public debate. CNews, a news channel owned by the devout Catholic billionaire Vincent Bolloré and often compared to America's Fox News, recently showed a graphic presenting abortion as the first cause of mortality worldwide. The channel later apologized for doing so.
The French conservative movement, Les Républicains, also had doubts. François-Xavier Bellamy, its lead candidate for the EU election, said in a 2019 interview he was "personally" against abortion and had taken part in anti-abortion protests in the past. Gérard Larcher, also a member of Les Républicains and the president of the conservative-controlled Senate, said he was against granting abortion a constitutional status, arguing that "abortion is not under threat in France."
Many opponents of the constitutional revision echoed his sentiments, stressing that their opposition was on legal or procedural grounds and that they did not seek to outlaw abortions.
"Macron forced Les Républicains to adopt a stance on an issue on which a wide array of opinions exist within the party," Bartoli said. For the far-right National Rally, the challenge is "keeping the image of a firm opponent" without alienating its base which, in majority, "will cheer on the proposed change," he added.
By backing a hugely popular proposal a few months ahead of an election, Macron gave conservative and far-right leaders a headache while courting support from the left.
Enshrining abortion rights into the constitution was a way of "uniting against conservatives and reactionaries," Christopher Weissberg, an MP in the pro-Macron ranks told POLITICO. "It helped build consensus and show ourselves under a progressive light."
Weissberg, who represents French citizens living in Canada and the U.S. said he had seen concern among his stateside constituents after the Roe v. Wade reversal, with some even reconsidering their future in the country
Increasing polarization
An IFOP poll from 2022 showed 81 percent of respondents in favor of adding the right to have an abortion to the constitution, with majority support across party lines. Only 10 percent said they had a negative opinion on abortion being legal.
"When abortion was legalized [in 1975], the French population was split on the matter," Pierre-Hadrien Bartoli, an analyst for the OpinionWay polling institute, said, pointing to the much higher prevalence of religious practice then compared to the now widely secularized French society. "The opinion that it [abortion] should be banned in all cases has almost disappeared.”
The increasing polarization of France's politics occasionally led the issue to reappear in the public debate. CNews, a news channel owned by the devout Catholic billionaire Vincent Bolloré and often compared to America's Fox News, recently showed a graphic presenting abortion as the first cause of mortality worldwide. The channel later apologized for doing so.
The French conservative movement, Les Républicains, also had doubts. François-Xavier Bellamy, its lead candidate for the EU election, said in a 2019 interview he was "personally" against abortion and had taken part in anti-abortion protests in the past. Gérard Larcher, also a member of Les Républicains and the president of the conservative-controlled Senate, said he was against granting abortion a constitutional status, arguing that "abortion is not under threat in France."
Many opponents of the constitutional revision echoed his sentiments, stressing that their opposition was on legal or procedural grounds and that they did not seek to outlaw abortions.
"Macron forced Les Républicains to adopt a stance on an issue on which a wide array of opinions exist within the party," Bartoli said. For the far-right National Rally, the challenge is "keeping the image of a firm opponent" without alienating its base which, in majority, "will cheer on the proposed change," he added.
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