Abortion: Parliament extends the legal period from 12 to 14 weeks

A year and a half have passed since the initial tabling of this bill in 2020, following a parliamentary report dating from 2019. The National Assembly adopted the text on November 30. This February 23 marks the final adoption of the text by Parliament.

“An important day for women’s health”

For Olivier Véran, Minister of Health, this February 23 is therefore “an important day in the life of this congregation, an important day for sexual and reproductive health, and an important day for women’s health“According to him, the time that elapsed between the filing of the bill was necessary, he does not question it.”The long term proved that it was the right time to tackle complex subjects from an ethical point of view. This long time is that of a parliamentary procedure which allowed everyone to question themselves in a sincere way and to compare points of view” explained in his speech the Minister of Health. It’s a “decision was not taken in a hurry: it was carefully thought out, it was balanced by the parliamentarians involved in this subject, who were able to feed their decision with the insight provided by the opinion of the Advisory Council National Ethics Committee, which had been seized at my request“he adds.

Other measures are provided for by this law

The first provision of the law therefore concerns the extension of the abortion period from twelve to fourteen weeks of pregnancy, but other elements have also been voted, “improve the effectiveness of the right to abortion“, according to Olivier Véran.

It is :

• The possibility given to midwives to perform instrumental abortions in health establishments;
• The inclusion in the law of the extension from 5 to 7 weeks of the time limit for resorting to medical abortion;
• The publication of a directory by each Regional Health Agency (ARS) of professionals and structures practicing abortion, on the basis of a voluntary census;
• The sanction of pharmacists in the event of refusal to issue an emergency contraceptive, apart from the cases of legitimate refusal provided for by the public health code.

Insufficient number of specialized centers

This extension of the abortion period was intended by parliamentarians to improve the conditions of access for women to this intervention, which is sometimes an obstacle course. And if the advances seem numerous, they remain insufficient for many doctors.

Asked by our colleagues from FranceInfo, Ghada Hatem, gynecologist-obstetrician and founder of the Maison des femmes de Saint-Denis, near Paris, who explains that he “we need to better distribute the centers that receive these women and perform abortions”.

Indeed, the difficulty of access or the closures of specialized centers which create medical deserts in France, which make access to abortion very difficult for some women.

Several thousand women concerned

And the time limit of twelve weeks adds an additional difficulty, which forces some women to go abroad to have an abortion. They would be several thousands, each year, to find themselves pregnant and out of time for abortion. “These are often women who are among the most vulnerable, the very young, the furthest from the healthcare system, the women who have the least access to health information, those who have no means of transport or again those who are victims of violence”specifies the deputy Marie-Noëlle Battistel.

For them, these two additional weeks may allow them to have a little more time to get information or find out how to access an abortion. Finally, it should be remembered that approximately 200,000 voluntary terminations of pregnancy take place each year in France.