France Holds Vote To Make Abortion Constitutional Right

If Congress endorses the measure, France will stand as the sole country globally to explicitly safeguard the right to terminate a pregnancy in its fundamental law.

Protestors hold a banner which reads "Women decide, Abortion is a fundamental right" during a silent gathering at Place de la Sorbonne organised by 'Abortion in Europe' movement.

Source : Getty

New Delhi: French lawmakers on Monday will vote to include the right to abortion into the constitution, a world first welcomed by women's rights groups and criticised by anti-abortion groups, reported news agency Reuters.

Abortion rights are more widely accepted in France than in the United States and many other countries, with polls showing around 80% of French people back the fact that abortion is legal.

 

In 2022, the US Supreme Court reversed the Roe v. Wade ruling that recognised women's constitutional right to abortion, prompting activists to push France to become the first country to protect the right in its basic law, as per the Reuters report.

 

A congress of both houses of parliament in Versailles, commencing at 3:30 pm (1430 GMT), is poised to secure the three-fifths majority required for the change, having overcome initial opposition in the right-leaning Senate, according to AFP.

If Congress endorses the measure, France will stand as the sole country globally to explicitly safeguard the right to terminate a pregnancy in its fundamental law.

President Emmanuel Macron committed last year to enshrine abortion—legalized in France since 1975—in the constitution following the United States Supreme Court's 2022 decision to overturn the longstanding right to the procedure, granting individual American states the authority to restrict or prohibit it, AFP reported.

In January, France's lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, overwhelmingly voted to establish abortion as a "guaranteed freedom" in the constitution.

The upper house, the Senate, echoed this decision on Wednesday, as per AFP.

The bill is anticipated to pass the final hurdle of a combined vote of both chambers during a rare joint session at the historic Palace of Versailles.

Given that the three-fifths threshold was significantly surpassed in both previous ballots, few anticipate any difficulty in securing the necessary supermajority, reported AFP.

Monday's vote is expected to inscribe in Article 34 of the French constitution that "the law determines the conditions in which a woman has the guaranteed freedom to have recourse to an abortion".