A draft constitutional law to “engrave in our Constitution the freedom of women to resort to abortion” will be sent to the Council of State this week, Emmanuel Macron announced on social networks this Sunday, October 29. It will then be “presented to the Council of Ministers by the end of the year”, so that “in 2024, the freedom of women to resort to abortion will be irreversible”, writes the President of the Republic. Emmanuel Macron made the commitment on March 8, responding to concerns arising from the cancellation a year and a half ago of the ruling guaranteeing the United States the right to abortion throughout the country.
To article 34 of the Constitution, it will be added: “the law determines the conditions under which the freedom of a woman is exercised, which is guaranteed to her, to have recourse to a voluntary termination of pregnancy”, according to information reported by La Tribune Sunday.
In France, the right to abortion (voluntary termination of pregnancy) is currently recognized in an ordinary law of 1975 and inscription in constitutional stone would complicate any future attempt by the legislator to suppress it or seriously undermine it, according to its defenders. According to a November 2022 survey, nearly nine in ten French people (86%) are in favor of including the right to abortion in the Constitution. Published in September, the latest official figures show an increasing number of abortions in 2022 (234,000) in France, after two years of exceptional decline linked to the Covid-19 epidemic.
“Work of bringing together points of view”
On October 4, Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed his wish to see this promise come to fruition. “I expressed my wish, on March 8, that we could find a text agreeing the points of view between the National Assembly and the Senate and allowing a Congress to be convened in Versailles,” underlined the Head of State . “I hope that this work of bringing together points of view will resume and be completed as soon as possible,” he added.
The leader of LFI deputies Mathilde Panot had a proposed constitutional law adopted in November 2022 at first reading in the Assembly, guaranteeing the “right to voluntary termination of pregnancy”. The Senate in turn approved it in February but included the “freedom of women” to resort to abortion, rather than their “right”. The LFI group had planned to reserve a place for this text in its November 30 niche so that the parliamentary shuttle could continue. But Mathilde Panot made it known on October 17 that she could withdraw this text if the executive tabled its own.
Unlike a parliamentary initiative proposal, a bill to revise the Constitution does not necessarily have to be submitted at the end to a referendum, which can also be approved by a three-fifths majority of the two chambers of parliament meeting in Congress. . The ordeal of a referendum on this subject is feared by many political leaders, who fear the mobilization of anti-abortion networks. Mathilde Panot had thus indicated her preference for this path, saying she was worried that a referendum would give rise to “a campaign where anti-choice movements would be galvanized”.