Photo credit:Gonzalo Fuentes
French lawmakers have approved a bill that will enshrine the right to an abortion in the Constitution of France in a joint session of Parliament at the Palace of Versailles.
The bill was approved in an overwhelming 780-72 vote on Monday, and nearly the entire joint session stood in a long-standing ovation.
“This right [to abortion] has retreated in the United States. And so nothing authorised us to think that France was exempt from this risk,” said Laura Slimani, from the Fondation des Femmes rights group.
“There’s a lot of emotion, as a feminist activist, also as a woman. And there’s a lot solemnity in a certain way, since we’re going to live through a historic moment, I hope,” she added.
Criticism
The response to the vote also included criticism from anti-abortion groups and far-right leaders, including Marine Le Pen.
Le Pen said Macron was using the legislation to score political points.
“We will vote to include it in the constitution because we have no problem with that,” Le Pen said.
But it was an exaggeration to call it a historic step because “no one is putting the right to abortion at risk in France”, she said.
Pascale Moriniere, president of the Association of Catholic Families, said the vote was a result of “panic”.
“We imported a debate that is not French, since the United States was first to remove that from law with the repeal of Roe v Wade,” she said. “There was an effect of panic from feminist movements, which wished to engrave this on the marble of the constitution.”
Women have had the legal right to abortion in France since 1974.
“Unfortunately, this event is not isolated: in many countries, even in Europe, there are currents of opinion that seek to hinder at any cost the freedom of women to terminate their pregnancy if they wish,” the introduction to the French legislation says.
