The Senate must vote this Wednesday, February 1 the entry of the right to abortion in the Constitution. If the proposal adopted in the Assembly was rejected, an amendment by a senator LR still allows the constitutionalization of the right to abortion.
The right to voluntary termination of pregnancy (Abortion) will it be enshrined in the Constitution? The answer lies with the Senate and more specifically with the right, which has a majority in the upper house of Parliament. The senators must decide this Wednesday, February 1, 2023 and tension is queen at the Luxembourg Palace. The proposed constitutional law on the right to abortion has already been adopted by an overwhelming majority in the National Assembly on November 24, 2022, but the Senate can still get in the way.
He has already done so in the Law Commission, on January 25, by rejecting the text drafted and submitted by the president of the rebellious group in the lower house, Mathilde Panot. The right almost unanimously deemed the proposal unacceptable as it stood. But hope is again allowed since the filing of an amendment signed by Senator LR and former collaborator of Simone Veil, Philippe Bas, on January 27. It is on this text that the senators must give their opinion during the parliamentary niche of the PS which decided to put the subject back on the agenda. “It would be considerable progress to engrave this unavoidable right in stone in the Constitution”, defended Patrick Kanner, president of the PS group in the Senate, to the World. The vote should not take place until late afternoon.
From “right to abortion” to “freedom”, what does the text provide?
If in the National Assembly, thanks to the unanimous vote of the left and the majority, the constitutional bill on the right to abortion was voted, in the Senate the case is quite different. The senatorial right blocked the text which provided for the addition of an article 66-2 to the Constitution: “The law guarantees the effectiveness and equal access to the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy”. Instead, the senator from La Manche Philippe Bas suggested an amendment to make the constitutionalization of the right to abortion acceptable: insert in article 34 of the fundamental text that “the law determines the conditions under which freedom is exercised. of the woman to terminate her pregnancy”.
The politician believes that with this modification the constitutionalization of the right to abortion follows the dynamics established by a decision of the Constitutional Council of June 27, 2001 which considers the freedom to terminate a pregnancy as a component of the freedom of women provided for by the 2 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. “The inclusion in the Constitution of this freedom would complete the evolution thus initiated”, argued the senator.
Can the amendment on the entry of the right to abortion into the Constitution be voted on?
Philippe Bas’s amendment is a step forward taken by the right on the constitutionalization of the right to abortion, but it is far from convincing the entire group of Republicans. The counter-proposal also loses along the way all the weight that the left wanted to give to the text. Socialist Senator Marie-Pierre de La Gontrie regrets the replacement of the expression “right to abortion” by the “freedom” to resort to abortion reports The world. A profound inconvenience which will not make the vote between the two parliamentary assemblies conform. Another PS senator, Laurence Rossignol, made the same observation at the Parisian but prefers to retain that “as soon as the Constitution guarantees that abortion is a freedom, it is protected”. Voices are raised with more severity on the Bas amendment, such as that of Senator Mélanie Vogel who judges that the text “is not satisfactory, because nothing will one day prevent the legislator from regressing on the right to abortion”.
On the right, elected officials who are always very cautious when it comes to modifying the Constitution are even more so when it comes to the right to abortion. Especially since the president of the LR group in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau, opposes the constitutionalization of this right, even more firmly when the proposal comes, originally, from the radical left. Some senators even consider “incomprehensible” the approach of Philippe Bas who himself rejected the text on January 25. But the freedom to vote being recorded in the LR for societal questions, the vote on the amendment is still possible. If we refer to the previous vote, 17 votes are enough for the entry of the right to abortion in the Constitution to be voted.
The right to abortion in the Constitution already refused in the Senate
France’s rebellious constitutional bill on including the right to abortion in the Constitution did not pass the Law Commission stage with a majority rejection. Sign that the project is not popular with all senators. However, a previous attempt initiated by Socialist Senator Mélanie Vogel in October 2022 came very close to adoption. The bill which had brought together the signatures of elected officials from seven of the eight groups present in the Senate – only Les Républicains were missing – had been rejected with 172 votes against for 139 votes in favor of the text.