ABORTION. In response to the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States to annul the law which guaranteed access to abortion for all women, French deputies propose to include the right to abortion in the Constitution. What does the law say in France?
[Mis à jour le 27 juin 2022 à 15h00] The right to abortion will become constitutional law. It is in any case the will of the Renaissance group (ex-LREM) which will file a bill aimed at sanctuarizing the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG). This initiative, formalized on June 25 by Aurore Bergé, the president of the group in the Assembly, comes as the United States is divesting itself of this major right. The Supreme Court has indeed taken the historic decision to revoke the right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade who, since 1973, guaranteed it throughout the country. From now on, each American state is free to prohibit or authorize abortion: 13 of them, including Mississippi and Texas, had adopted so-called “automatic” laws to make any abortion illegal as soon as the decision was announced. (or within 30 days thereafter). A dozen other States should follow this decision, limiting or prohibiting this right in a large part of the country (half of the States would be concerned).
Including the right to abortion in the Constitution is a “guarantee that we must give to women”, according to Aurore Bergé, who spoke on France Inter this Saturday, June 25. For the majority, the initiative would serve to protect the Veil law which, since 1975, has allowed all women to have recourse to abortion on French soil. A constitutional assurance also defended by the deputies of the Nupes intergroup, who propose, in a press release published on the twitter account of the leader LFI Mathilde Panot on June 25, that a “text common to all the groups of the Assembly” be tabled to “protect this fundamental right by enshrining it in the Constitution as soon as possible”.
If the leader of the LREM parliamentarians assured that this consolidation of abortion in French law would be “widely shared on the benches of the National Assembly and the Senate”, the first speeches prove the opposite: some do not not seeing the interest, like the president of the French Modem Bayrou, who wondered about the “usefulness” of such a decision while “no political current calls into question the Veil law” (des remarks made on the set of BFM TV). On the far right side too, we wonder if it is “decent to import the problems that the United States is experiencing”, as explained on France Info RN spokesperson Laurent Jacobelli, who believes that it is “not a question of the Constitution”, and who protests that “attention” is drawn to “false problems”.
In France, the bill on abortion, carried by Simone Veil, was adopted on November 29, 1974 by 284 votes against 189 in the National Assembly. Since then, all women have been able to have abortions on French soil within a period originally set at 7 weeks and then increased to 14 weeks in 2022. The legislation has indeed evolved since the Veil law, securing and broadening the access to abortion. An “offence of obstructing the voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG)” was recognized by the law of January 27, 1993 in particular. It is characterized by the disruption of access to establishments performing abortions or by the exertion of pressure on women wishing to have an abortion.
The abortion law of March 25, 2013 also allows full reimbursement of abortion for all women and 100% reimbursement of contraception for minors. A year later, the law of August 4, 2014, on the other hand, removed the notion of distress from the conditions for recourse to abortion. In 2016, a law abolished the minimum reflection period. It allows midwives to perform medical abortions and health centers to perform instrumental abortions. The law of March 20, 2017 extends the offense of obstruction to the internet and social networks.
Abortion has benefited from new guarantees more recently. A decree signed on February 19, 2022 extends the conditions for carrying out voluntary terminations of pregnancy by medication outside health establishments. It provides for an extension of the deadlines up to 7 weeks of pregnancy, the possibility of abortion care by teleconsultation with delivery of abortifacient drugs to the patient in the community pharmacy, but also the abolition of the first compulsory intake of medication before the health professional.
Finally, the law of March 2, 2022 aimed at strengthening the right to abortion has extended the legal deadline for an abortion, brought to 14 weeks of pregnancy (16 SA). It should be noted that non-emancipated minors must obtain the authorization of an adult of their choice. Abortion is 100% reimbursed by health insurance on the basis of a tariff of 500.14 euros to 664.05 euros for surgical abortion and from 187.92 euros to 193.16 euros for abortion medicated. Abortion is fairly well accepted in French society: nearly 75% of French people are in favor of this practice, compared to 48% in 1975, according to an IFOP survey carried out in 2014.
In France and in Belgium, the deadlines are identical: medical abortion can be performed up to the fifth week of pregnancy, i.e. a maximum of seven weeks after the start of the last menstrual period, while abortion by aspiration can be performed up to the twelfth week pregnancy, i.e. a maximum of 14 weeks after the start of the last menstrual period. Abortion is tolerated beyond 12 weeks if the pregnancy threatens the life of the woman or if the unborn child is suffering from a serious and incurable disease. More than half of European countries have set these same limits, recalls the site Touteleurope.eu. On the Old Continent, the range of maximum delays for an abortion range from 10 weeks in Portugal to 24 weeks (in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands).
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The text now proposed by the majority is about twenty lines. It begins with the need to become aware of the fragility of this right, given the “unbearable backsliding” that is taking place in the United States and which “forces us to recall the indispensable and inviolable nature of the right to abortion in our country and in the world.” By stipulating that “no one may be deprived of the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy”, this proposed constitutional law proposes “to enshrine in the Constitution the impossibility of depriving a person of the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG).
The revision of the Constitution that the application of this law would suppose can take place on the initiative of the President of the Republic or that of Parliament. “In this field, the two parliamentary assemblies have the same powers, which implies that the draft or the proposal of constitutional law is voted in the same terms by the National Assembly and the Senate”, specifies the official site of the Assembly . The text must then be definitively adopted, either by referendum or by “a vote by a majority of three-fifths of the votes cast by the two chambers of Parliament meeting in Congress at Versailles”.
The decision of the American Supreme Court on abortion has proven that rights are never fully acquired. Nobody is safe from a reversal according to the political currents. “This also calls for us to take steps in France so that tomorrow we cannot have reversals that could exist”, explained Aurore Bergé on June 25, who hears, like the vast majority of LREM deputies and Nupes, sanctuarize this right so that it is not at the mercy of successive decision-makers. In his interview for France Inter, she quotes in particular “the new RN deputies who are for some fierce opponents of access to abortion”. Faced with possible reluctance and propensity to reconsider the right to abortion, the new leader of the LREM deputies affirmed: “We must secure it to inscribe it in the marble of the Constitution”. For jurists of the same opinion, this inclusion in the Constitution would make it possible to hinder or even prevent attempts to modify, weaken or even abolish the law. Lisa Carayon, lecturer in law at the Sorbonne Paris 1 explained to the newspaper The cross on June 27 that “challenging this right would therefore suppose revising the Constitution, a cumbersome procedure”, which would make it possible to “make the total abolition of abortion more complicated”.
And legally, is it feasible to include abortion in the Constitution? The adoption of this fundamental law would require either a referendum, in the event that the National Assembly and the Senate adopted the text in similar terms beforehand, or a proposal from parliamentarians made by the President of the Republic himself. same, then taking up the bill and convening a Congress at Versailles (the condition would then be to obtain a 3/5 majority). It is however important to note that in constitutional language, we speak of “freedom” and not of right, in order to arbitrate between respect for life and individual freedom, as constitutionalist Bertrand Mathieu reminded La Croix. But, if that would not make access to abortion a full and complete right, it would be a guarantee of security for French women.
If for the time being, no one has directly opposed Aurore Bergé’s bill, some question its usefulness. Marine Le Pen, in the wake of her spokesperson, wondered about an “agitation” which “does not seem justified to her”. She made a point of making a distinction with the United States, recalling that “no party plans to change our legislation” on abortion, as reported The world. The acting president of the RN Jordan Bardella abounded: “No serious political movement in France calls into question the Veil law, acquired to be protected”, he assured on Twitter, even judging that the government is trying to “instrumentalise “What is “American domestic policy” to “create a diversion”… “Where are its emergency plans for purchasing power and against immigration?”, he asks.
As a sub-cited, the president of the Modem François Bayrou is also one of the circumspects, he who said he was “surprised” by the “effervescent reactions” that the removal of abortion from American law aroused in French political life. For Anne-Cécile Mailfert, president of the Women’s Foundation contacted by AFP, this right hangs by a thread. “It would be enough if we had a parliament with a conservative majority, and abortion could be banned,” she told AFP.
Medical abortion can be performed in a health center or at home, through a doctor or a nurse. The method consists of taking two drugs 24 or 48 hours apart. No anesthesia or surgery is required. Bleeding, gastrointestinal disturbances, abdominal pain, fever and chills may occur. Most women report pain equivalent to menstrual pain. A gynecological examination is necessary after the abortion.
Abortion by aspiration, or surgery, consists of aspirating the embryo with a cannula introduced into the uterus. Uterine contractions may occur after the operation. The procedure is performed by a doctor in a health facility and lasts about fifteen minutes, which is followed by a short period of rest. The patient receives local or general anesthesia. Abortion by aspiration carries risks, like any other surgical operation.