The debate still rages within the political class. The President of the Senate Gérard Larcher (LR) said on Tuesday that he was opposed to the inclusion of abortion in the Constitution, a promise from Emmanuel Macron which will be debated in the Assembly on Wednesday before being then examined by the Senate.
“Abortion is not threatened in our country. If it were threatened, believe me, I would fight for it to be maintained. But I think that the Constitution is not a catalog of social and societal rights “, argued the President of the Senate on Franceinfo.
Before adoption by Congress, bringing together deputies and senators, a draft constitutional revision must first be voted on in the same terms by the National Assembly and the Senate.
“By tradition, I do not vote, but I am giving you a very personal opinion. In conscience, I think that the Constitution is not that catalog,” he repeated.
Possible adoption by Congress in early March
In the event of probable adoption in the hemicycle of the National Assembly on Wednesday, the text would then go to the Senate before possible adoption by Congress in early March by a three-fifths majority.
Against a backdrop of concern over the challenges to voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion) throughout the world, and particularly in the United States, the government’s text plans to include in the Constitution the fact that “the law determines the conditions in which the freedom guaranteed to women to have recourse to abortion is exercised.
He is trying to find a middle path between the National Assembly, which voted at the end of 2022 for an LFI text to guarantee “access to the right to abortion”, and the Senate, which approved in February a version evoking “freedom of the woman to terminate her pregnancy. He therefore adds the notion of “guaranteed” freedom. “We are making a compromise on the wording, I hope that this will lead to a favorable vote in the Senate,” reacted Tuesday morning the head of the rebellious deputies Mathilde Panot, to the press at the Assembly.
“It is the ultimate freedom of each and everyone to be able to dispose of their body, this has its place in our Constitution,” she added. “The first concern of mine is the conditions in which we practice voluntary termination of pregnancy,” argued Gérard Larcher, recalling “that in more than ten years we have closed 130 centers which were dedicated to ‘Abortion’.