Time, place, Macron’s speech, seal press… Here is what we know about the sealing ceremony which will celebrate with great fanfare this Friday the inclusion of abortion in the Constitution.
On Monday, deputies and senators, meeting in Congress in Versailles, largely adopted the draft constitutional law aimed at including the “guaranteed freedom” to resort to voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion) in the Constitution. France has thus become, neither more nor less, the first country in the world to include the right to abortion in its fundamental law. A first that President Emmanuel Macron intends to celebrate. In the wake of the vote, the president himself announced the organization of a sealing ceremony, this Friday, March 8, on the occasion of International Women’s Rights Day.
French pride, universal message.
Let us celebrate together the entry of a new freedom guaranteed in the Constitution by the first sealing ceremony in our history open to the public.
See you this March 8, International Women’s Rights Day. pic.twitter.com/dcwniEPei4
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) March 4, 2024
The event will begin at noon, Place Vendôme, in Paris, where the Ministry of Justice is located. The ceremony will be open to the public. For the first time, relay The Parisianthe seal press, which Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès himself ordered in his time and which weighs barely 300 kg, specifies Le Figarowill leave the Chancellery to affix the seal of the Republic made in 1848. A seal which has not been used since the last constitutional reform, sixteen years ago.
Before the entire mechanism of the seal press is put into motion, President Emmanuel Macron should give a speech which will undoubtedly be an opportunity to highlight women’s rights. Then, the ancestral ritual will take place. The Director of Civil Affairs and the Seal will pronounce, word for word: “I have the honor to request that you please proceed with the position of the Great Seal of the French Republic on the constitutional law, relating to the guaranteed freedom of voluntary termination of pregnancy.” The Minister of Justice, Éric Dupond-Moretti, will then pay tribute to his title of Minister of Justice by turning the pendulum of the press no less than ten times. Brief. The show promises to be there!