The Senate must vote this Wednesday, February 1 to include the right to abortion in the Constitution. The right, the majority in the upper house, rejected the proposal, but an amendment by a senator LR still allows the constitutionalization of the right to abortion.
The issue of abortion is back in Parliament. The Senate is preparing for a debate session and especially for the vote on the registration of voluntary termination of pregnancy (Abortion) in the Constitution. This Wednesday, February 1, processions of activists and activists gathered in front of the Luxembourg Palace calling to make recourse to abortion a fundamental right. The National Assembly has already worked in this direction by adopting the proposed constitutional law on November 24, 2022. A path that the upper house of Parliament did not follow, which preferred to reject the text submitted by the rebellious deputies during the commission. of Laws, January 25. The senators, mostly LR inserters and opposed to the constitutionalization of the right to abortion, judged that the text “only offered an illusory solution to the concrete difficulties of access to abortion”.
But there is a new chance to see the right to abortion be included in the 1958 Constitution this Wednesday thanks to the amendment tabled by Senator LR de la Manche, Philippe Bas. The politician who is a former collaborator of Simone Veil and who challenged the first version of the text suggested a new, more consensual formulation to allow the constitutionalization of the right to abortion. A way, perhaps, to gain a few votes on the right without losing the support of the left and the majority. Unexpected efforts on the part of the right but which may not be enough in the face of a Senate which has already obstructed the entry of the right to abortion several times into the Constitution. However, “it would be considerable progress to engrave this unavoidable right in stone in the Constitution”, defended Patrick Kanner, president of the PS group in the Senate, to the World.
From “right to abortion” to “freedom”, what does the text provide?
If in the National Assembly, thanks to the unanimous vote of the left and the majority, the constitutional bill on the right to abortion was voted, in the Senate the case is quite different. The senatorial right blocked the text which provided for the addition of an article 66-2 to the Constitution: “The law guarantees the effectiveness and equal access to the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy”. Instead, the senator from La Manche Philippe Bas suggested an amendment to make the constitutionalization of the right to abortion acceptable: insert in article 34 of the fundamental text that “the law determines the conditions under which freedom is exercised. of the woman to terminate her pregnancy”.
The politician believes that with this modification the constitutionalization of the right to abortion follows the dynamic established by a decision of the Constitutional Council of June 27, 2001 which considers the freedom to terminate pregnancy as a component of the freedom of women and “which gave constitutional value”. “The inclusion in the Constitution of this freedom would complete the evolution thus initiated”, argued the senator. Another advantage that Philippe Bas finds in his amendment: the proposed wording leaves the field open to a modification of the Veil law as was the case for the extension of the period for resorting to abortion or for its care by health insurance. Purposefully chosen examples.
Can the amendment on the entry of the right to abortion into the Constitution be voted on?
Philippe Bas’s amendment is a step forward taken by the right on the constitutionalization of the right to abortion, but it is far from convincing the entire group of Republicans. The counter-proposal also loses along the way all the weight that the left wanted to give to the text. Socialist Senator Marie-Pierre de La Gontrie regrets the replacement of the expression “right to abortion” by the “freedom” to resort to abortion reports The world. A profound inconvenience which will not make the vote between the two parliamentary assemblies conform. Another PS senator, Laurence Rossignol, made the same observation at the Parisian but prefers to retain that “as soon as the Constitution guarantees that abortion is a freedom, it is protected”. Voices are raised with more severity on the Bas amendment, such as that of Senator Mélanie Vogel who judges that the text “is not satisfactory, because nothing will one day prevent the legislator from regressing on the right to abortion”. If the form, the left finds fault, in substance the amendment of Philippe Bas remains a solution to constitutionalize the right to abortion, a situation of Mélanie Vogel summarizes in a question recalls the evening newspaper: “Worth- Is it better an unsatisfactory step, but a step all the same, or no step at all?
On the right, elected officials who are always very cautious when it comes to modifying the Constitution are even more so when it comes to the right to abortion. Especially since the president of the LR group in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau, opposes the constitutionalization of this right, even more firmly when the proposal comes, originally, from the radical left. Some senators even consider “incomprehensible” the approach of Philippe Bas who himself rejected the text on January 25. But the freedom to vote being recorded in the LR for societal questions, the vote on the amendment is still possible. If we refer to the previous vote, 17 votes are enough for the entry of the right to abortion in the Constitution to be voted.
The right to abortion in the Constitution already refused in the Senate
France’s rebellious constitutional bill on including the right to abortion in the Constitution did not pass the Law Commission stage with a majority rejection. Sign that the project is not popular with all senators. However, a previous attempt initiated by Socialist Senator Mélanie Vogel in October 2022 came very close to adoption. The bill which had brought together the signatures of elected officials from seven of the eight groups present in the Senate – only Les Républicains were missing – had been rejected with 172 votes against for 139 votes in favor of the text.
What if the Senate votes to include abortion in the Constitution?
The stakes are high in the Senate. The result of the vote on Wednesday, February 1 depends on the inclusion of the right to abortion in the Constitution. In the event of a majority vote against the bill, hopes of seeing abortion become a fundamental right will vanish until the next attempt. But if the majority of senators are in favor of the bill? Then another stage will have to be organized to include the right to abortion in the text: a referendum. It is customary for constitutional law proposals to submit the text to French citizens after the adoption of the text by the two assemblies of Parliament.