The French Senate has given the green signal to include the right to abortion in the constitution.

The French Senate approved this Wednesday by an overwhelming majority (267 votes in favor, 50 against) a proposal to include in the Constitution “the guaranteed freedom of women to resort to voluntary interruption of pregnancy.” The favorable vote, added to the National Assembly, allows the government to call a congress for constitutional reform that will be held “next week”, according to the executive spokeswoman, Prisca Thévenot.

The debate at the Luxembourg Palace, the upper house of the French parliament, was expected to be tense. On the one hand, the left-backed government is in favor of including it in the constitution – an election promise of Emmanuel Macron; On the other hand, a section of the right and several center parties are skeptical over the formulation of the reform to include the right to abortion in the Constitution. Among the prominent figures in the upper house who opposed the measure were the three leaders of the conservative majority: the President of the Senate, Gerard Larcher; the leader of the Republican group, Bruno Reteleau, and the president of the Centrist Union, Hervé Marseille.

Senate approval without amendments was required to take the reform to the next stage: a Constitutional Congress that would bring together both houses of Parliament and have the favorable vote of three-fifths of senators and representatives.

“Today three principles are being debated: the freedom of women to have an abortion, the freedom of conscience of doctors and health workers, and the principle of protecting human dignity,” Eric Dupond-Moretti, the Justice Minister, began to say in defence. Of improvement. “The freedom to have an abortion is a freedom like no other, because it allows women to decide their own future. She said, “A democracy cannot fully control its destiny if the women living in it do not have the freedom to control their own destiny.”

The final wording chosen by the French government is the result of a balance between the first version approved by the Assembly, which spoke of the “right to abortion”, and a text approved by the Senate last year that changed the wording ‘right’. ‘Freedom’. In the end, the Executive opted for the expression “guaranteed independence” to obtain the necessary support in both Houses. One of the amendments which had the best chance of succeeding, and which was ultimately rejected, proposed the deletion of the word “guarantee”.

discretion section

One of the fundamental points of debate in the Senate, the subject of an amendment proposal, was the guarantee of discretion clause for doctors, a subject of repeated concern among a section of the right. In France, a 1975 law had already established this right, which persists to this day, with a specific discretion clause that applies not only to doctors but also to any staff involved in the procedure. However, if they exercise this privilege, doctors must immediately inform their patients and refer them to a competent medical team.

Some senators feared that women’s “guaranteed freedom” to resort to abortion, when included in the Constitution, could lead to jurisprudence against doctors who do not want to intervene despite the minister’s multiple denials. Question point of justice on this. The Republican senator, Bruno Ritaleau, defended, saying, “Our fear is that no senator, not even the Minister of Justice, can guarantee that tomorrow’s jurisprudence could create an enforceable right in this regard.”

In previous weeks, associations defending women’s rights had redoubled their efforts to persuade senators, and several rallies were held around the Senate in Paris throughout the afternoon of Wednesday.

Reaction to the overturning of Roe v. Wade

Constitutional protection of abortion in France began to take shape in 2022 with a joint proposal by several French political groups in response to the United States Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, a decision that guaranteed access to abortion throughout the country. Gave. , In the French state, interruption of pregnancy has been guaranteed since 1975, the year in which the Veil Law was approved (named after Simone Weil, the health minister who promoted the measure).

In the midst of this debate, a few days ago the conservative news network Cnews sparked a national controversy with an infographic in which it described abortion as the leading cause of mortality in the world, ahead of cancer and smoking. Eric Dupond-Moretti condemned, “It was not on FoxNews, but in France, on a French channel, where the day before yesterday the number of abortions was linked to the number of deaths from cancer and smoking.”

The last revision of the law took place until 2022, a reform that extended the legal period for abortion until the fourteenth week of pregnancy (as has been the case in Spain since 2011). In Wednesday’s debate, several interventions highlighted the implications of constitutional inscription of women’s right to abortion, citing examples such as Hungary, Poland and the United States, calling for strengthening legal protections in the context of the growth of the extreme right. Importance of. Some threats against them were also mentioned, such as threats linked to anti-abortion misinformation campaigns on social networks.

On the other hand, despite the continuous development of the law, access to abortion remains fragile in practice: the time frame and journey to access this practice (whether with medication or surgical intervention) remain uneven. Availability of centers for women based on profile or social status and near their place of residence. The notion of “guaranteed freedom” should facilitate the mobilization of resources allocated to improving that access.