Lawmakers in France are set to vote on Monday to include the right to abortion in the country’s constitution, a move that has garnered widespread public support.
During a congress of both houses of parliament in Versailles, the required three-fifths majority for the change is expected to be achieved after initially facing resistance in the right-leaning Senate. If the congress approves the amendment, France will become the only country in the world to explicitly protect the right to terminate a pregnancy in its fundamental law.
President Emmanuel Macron had pledged last year to enshrine abortion rights in the constitution following the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn the longstanding right to the procedure, allowing states to restrict or prohibit it.
Notably, Simone de Beauvoir, a prominent feminist, had warned earlier that women’s rights could be jeopardized in times of crisis. In response to the US Supreme Court’s decision, Macron hailed the Senate’s decisive action and promptly called for the parliamentary congress on Monday.
The last time such a congress was convened to amend the constitution was in 2008, when lawmakers narrowly approved significant reforms under former President Nicolas Sarkozy. These changes included limiting a president’s tenure to two terms and strengthening protections for press freedom.
The lower-house National Assembly had previously passed a bill in January to recognize abortion as a “guaranteed freedom” in the constitution, which was followed by the Senate’s approval on Wednesday.
Reflecting on the journey towards constitutional recognition of abortion rights, Claudine Monteil, head of the Femmes Monde (Women in the World) association, noted the evolution from the 1971 “Manifesto of the 343” to the present day. Abortion was legalized in France in 1975 through legislation spearheaded by health minister Simone Veil, a revered figure in women’s rights who was interred at the Pantheon following her death in 2018.
