The Senate voted on February 1 in favor of the inclusion in the Constitution of the “freedom” to resort to abortion. However, the modification will not come into force immediately and a long parliamentary work must still take place.
They had refused it last fall, they finally changed their mind. The senators voted in favor of the registration of the right to voluntary interruption of large (Abortion) in the Constitution on Wednesday, February 1, 2023, by 166 votes against 152. But it is appropriate to be more precise, the Senate agreed to specify in article 34 of the Constitution the paragraph which provides for “the freedom of women to terminate her pregnancy, no right strictly speaking, therefore, as the National Assembly would have wished, which voted last November 25 to constitutionalize the right to abortion, on the proposal of elected representatives from the left and benefiting from cross-party support with the majority.
In its first version, the proposed constitutional law on the right to abortion did not convince the occupants of the Luxembourg Palace, who rejected the text in the Law Commission. Another consensus had to be found to bring together a majority of senators ready to adopt the text. And it is Philippe Bas, LR senator from La Manche and former collaborator of Simone Veil, who is at the origin of the amendment which hit the mark by substituting the term “freedom” for that of “right”. “There is no absolute right, there is a freedom that is already recognized and that we can write into the Constitution, but on the condition that there is a reconciliation between the rights of the pregnant woman to end her pregnancy and the protection of the unborn child after a certain delay,” he explained.
This is one more step towards the inclusion of the right to abortion in the Constitution but this change will not happen tomorrow. The amended and voted text must return to the National Assembly before other stages come to ratify the thing.
From “right to abortion” to “freedom”, what does the text provide?
The text on abortion in France was voted in the Senate but in a different form than that which was adopted by the National Assembly. 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”. It is this amended text that won the majority of the votes of the upper house on February 1, 2023.
The senator believes that with this modification, the constitutionalization of the right to abortion follows the dynamic established by a decision of the Constitutional Council of June 27, 2001 which considers the freedom to terminate one’s pregnancy as a component of the freedom of women and ” which gave constitutional value”. “The inclusion in the Constitution of this freedom would complete the evolution thus initiated”, argued the senator.
Another advantage that Philippe Bas finds in his amendment on abortion in France: the proposed wording leaves the field open to a modification of the Veil law, as was the case for the extension of the period for resorting to abortion in April 2020 or for its coverage by the Health Insurance voted a few years ago. Purposefully chosen examples.
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A new vote in the Assembly, before a referendum?
The vote of the Senate will not lead tomorrow to the modification of the Constitution. A long parliamentary work still has to take place. The Senate adopted an amended text compared to the version voted in the National Assembly. However, a proposal for a constitutional law must be voted on in the same terms by both chambers. The text will therefore return to the Bourbon Palace to be voted on in its new form.
It is therefore a new sequence of parliamentary work which is being prepared, especially as the deputies could debate the disappearance of the expression “right to abortion” in favor of “freedom”. As the text remains a step forward despite this rectification, it could be adopted again by the Assembly. But is it still necessary to know when the vote will be organized while the pension reform or the immigration law monopolize the attention of the deputies. The entry of the right to abortion into the Constitution could only be on the agenda in several months. And after this stage, it will again be necessary to wait either until the organization of a referendum, or until the proposal by the government of a bill taking up the text adopted by Parliament.
It is customary for constitutional law proposals to submit the text to French citizens after the adoption of the text by the two assemblies of Parliament. But the result of the referendum may involve risks, another outcome and the proposal of a bill by the executive but then a new parliamentary relay will be necessary and without the certainty that the two chambers vote twice in the same direction.
A text that does not fully satisfy
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’. If on the form, the left finds fault, in substance, Philippe Bas’s amendment remains a solution to constitutionalize the right to abortion, a situation that Mélanie Vogel summarizes in a question, recalls the evening newspaper: ” Is it better to have an unsatisfactory step, but a step all the same, or no step at all? ?”
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 had rejected the text on January 25. But at LR, the freedom to vote for societal issues is recorded.