France Becomes First Country To Add Right To Abortion In Constitution (Photo by Anthony Choren on Unsplash)
During a historic joint session of Parliament, French lawmakers approved a bill that would enable a woman’s right to abortion in the French constitution. During the parliamentary session at the Palace of Versailles, the bill was passed with an overwhelming majority of 780-72 vote. Nearly the entire joint session stood in a long-standing ovation during the passing of the bill.
France witnessed celebrations all across the country. Women’s human rights activists hailed President Emmanuel Macron for keeping up his promise made during the rollback of abortion in the United States.
Bothe houses of the Parliament, the National Assembly and the Senate have earlier adopted a bill to ament Article 34 of the French Constitution specifying that a woman’s right to abortion is guaranteed.
After the historic vote, prime Minister Gabriel Attal called on to the 925 lawmakers, who were gathered for a joint session of Parliament, to make France a leader in women’s right and set an example defending the women’s rights for countries around the world.
Attal said, “we have moral debt to women…we have chance to change history”. Paying tribute to Simone Veil, former health minister and feminist who championed the bill that decriminalized abortion in 1975, he said, “Make Simon Veil proud”.
No major political parties of France that are represented in the Parliament raised questions against the bill, including Marien Le Pen’s far-right national Rally party and the conservative Republicans. Le Pen said her party will vote in favour of the bill but, “there is no need to make this a historic day”.
A recent poll showed that over 80 percentage of the French public favour the right to abortion. The poll also showed that majority of people are in favour of enshrining the right in constitution. The French government put forth the argument that right to abortion is threatened in Washington, where in 2022, Supreme Court overturned a 50-year-old ruling that supported abortion.
