France becomes world’s first country to enshrine abortion rights in constitution

[Stone]

France becomes world’s first country to enshrine abortion rights in constitution



Lawmakers sit on Monday prior to a vote on whether to add the freedom to have an abortion to the French constitution.

CNN [slightly adapted] | March 4, 2024

France became the world’s first country to enshrine abortion rights in its constitution on Monday, the culmination of an effort that began in direct response to the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Lawmakers from both houses of the French Parliament voted 780 to 72 in favor of the measure, easily clearing the three-fifths majority needed to amend the French constitution.

Monday’s vote, held during a special gathering of lawmakers at the Palace of Versailles, southwest of Paris, was the final step in the legislative process. The French Senate and National Assembly each overwhelmingly approved the amendment earlier this year.

The amendment states that there is a “guaranteed freedom” to abortion in France. Some groups and lawmakers had called for stronger language to explicitly call abortion a “right.”

Lawmakers hailed the move as a history-making way for France to send a clear signal of support on reproductive rights, with abortion under threat in the United States, as well as in parts of Europe, like Hungary, where far-right parties have come to power.

Following the vote, the Eiffel Tower was lit up with the words “my body my choice.”

The Eiffel Tower lights up with the message "my body my choice" after the vote on Monday.

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said before the vote that lawmakers had a “moral debt” to women who were, in the past, forced to endure illegal abortions.

“Above all, we’re sending a message to all women: your body belongs to you,” Attal said.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the government would hold a formal ceremony celebrating the amendment’s passage on Friday, International Women’s Rights Day.

An embryologist is seen at work at the Virginia Center for Reproductive Medicine, in Reston, Virginia on June 12, 2019 - Freezing your eggs, getting pregnant after the age of 50, choosing the baby's sex: when it comes to in-vitro fertilization and other assisted reproduction procedures in the United States, would-be parents are spoilt for choice. This isn't the case in many other countries, including France, which is hoping to pass legislation that would let single women and lesbian couples benefit from these technologies for the first time.

While abortion is a highly divisive issue in US politics that often falls along party lines, in France it is widely supported. Many of the lawmakers who voted against the amendment did so not because they opposed abortion, but because they felt the measure was unnecessary, given the wide support for reproductive rights.

The measure’s passage is a clear victory for the French left, which has been pushing for years to guarantee abortion rights in the constitution. Before 2022, President Emmanuel Macron’s government argued — like the amendment’s current opponents — that the move was unnecessary.

However, in 2022, when the US Supreme Court ruled against Roe v. Wade and let states individually decide on the issue, France was pushed to act.

French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti said perviously, before debate began in the National Assembly in January, that history was full of other examples where “fundamental rights” were believed to be safe but then taken away, “as we were recently reminded by the decision of the US Supreme Court.”

“We now have irrefutable proof that no democracy, not even the largest of them all, is immune,” he said.

The vote marks the 25th time the French government has amended its constitution since the founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958.

The Catholic Church was one of the few groups to announce its opposition to the amendment. The Pontifical Academy for Life, the Vatican body which focuses on issues related to bioethics, said in a statement that “in the era of universal human rights, there can be no ‘right’ to take human life.”

A conference of French bishops on Thursday also reiterated the church’s opposition to abortion ahead of the vote.

[Stone]

Google translation:

The vote with which the National Assembly dared to declare the killing of innocent children in the womb as a "human right" marks the lowest point in the entire history of the French Revolutionary Republic. In the fearful and cowardly silence of the Bergoglian "church" the last, execrable affront to nascent life and to God, "who is Lord and gives life", takes place. Let the unanimous voice of the Catholics of France be raised, so that almighty God may spare them from the scourges that will strike their nation due to a corrupt and perverse authority. May the Lord have mercy on the good when he brings down his right hand on the wicked.

«Ah France, ah France! Called by Our predecessors "mirror of all Christianity and sure pillar of the Faith" [...], you have become the most implacable enemy of all the adversaries of the Faith that have ever existed!» (Pius VI, Allocution “Quare Lacrymæ”, 17 June 1793).