The deputies largely approved, on the night of Wednesday to Thursday, the inclusion in the Constitution of “the freedom guaranteed to women to have recourse to a voluntary termination of pregnancy” (IVG). This formulation came from the constitutional reform project presented to the Council of Ministers in December. 99 MPs voted for this principle, while 13 voted against.
The entire text will be submitted to a solemn vote by the National Assembly on Tuesday January 30. If it is adopted by the deputies, the constitutional reform project will then pass to the Senate, where it will have to be approved in the same terms in order to be ratified during a Congress bringing together the two chambers of Parliament. A positive vote of at least three-fifths of parliamentarians is required to finalize the process.
An uncertain vote in the Senate
The President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher (Les Républicains), declared on Tuesday that he was opposed to the inclusion of freedom of recourse to abortion in the Constitution. “I think that the Constitution is not a catalog of social and societal rights,” he argued on franceinfo. Gérard Larcher considered that the right to abortion was “not threatened in our country”. The right has a majority in the Senate, which makes the outcome of the senators’ vote on this text uncertain.
Emmanuel Macron announced in March 2023 his intention to include the right to abortion in the Constitution. The subject resurfaced in the debates in June 2022, following the annulment, by the Supreme Court of the United States, of a ruling which guaranteed women the right to abortion throughout the American territory. Around twenty American states have since banned or restricted the use of abortion.