France is preparing to enshrine abortion as a constitutional right at a joint session of parliament next week, after the senate voted in favour on Wednesday night. The government of President Emmanuel Macron had pushed for Article 34 of the constitution to be amended to cite “the freedom of women to have recourse to an abortion, which is guaranteed”. The French government, lawmakers and senators had argued that the right to abortion needed full constitutional protection as it comes under threat in the US and other countries in Europe.
After the US supreme court overturned in 2022 a 50-year-old ruling that used to guarantee abortion, senators and lawmakers in France have argued that in Europe abortion rights are also at risk of being rolled back or limited, citing countries such as Hungary, Poland, Italy and Spain.
After a long senate debate on Wednesday, the French prime minister, Gabriel Attal, said: “When women’s rights are attacked in the world, France stands up and places itself at the avant garde of progress,” according to The Guardian.
The president, Emmanuel Macron, said he had promised to make women’s freedom to choose an abortion “irreversible”.
The French justice minister, Éric Dupond-Moretti, said: “This vote is historic … It states to all those who don’t yet know it that the women in our country are free … and to what point we are attached to that freedom.”
A survey by French polling company IFOP in November 2022 found 86 percent of French people supported making abortion a constitutional right.
More than 95% of women in Europe live in countries that allow some access to abortion. Some 39 European countries have legalised abortion on request, albeit with some restrictions. Six countries have strict limits in place although only three (Andorra, Malta and San Marino) do not allow abortion at all.
In 2022, the French parliament voted to extend France’s legal limit for ending a pregnancy from 12 to 14 weeks, amid anger that thousands of women were forced to travel abroad each year to terminate pregnancies in countries including the Netherlands, Spain or England.
(With inputs from agencies)
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