Associated with the left, the presidential majority managed on Tuesday to adopt the bill aimed at constitutionalizing the right to abortion. All that remains is to convince the senators.
In France, deputies took a new step this Tuesday by adopting by a large majority a bill providing for the right to abortion to be included in the constitution.
By 493 votes to 30, the presidential majority joined forces with the left.
“The government and the Assembly have not missed their meeting with history“immediately announced the Minister of Justice.
On the right, a handful of Republican deputies have clearly expressed their opposition to this text: these elected officials believe that the right to abortion is not threatened in France and that the bill would be based “on fantasies”according to MP Anne-Laure Blin.
These suggestions to include voluntary termination of pregnancy in the French Constitution appeared the day after a historic decision by the Supreme Court of the United States calling into question the right to abortion.
But the path still remains narrow, the French Senate must also decide. However, the Republican majority is clearly more reluctant.
The president of the Palais du Luxembourg, Gérard Larcher, has already expressed his reservations, judging that “the Constitution is not a catalog of social and societal rights”. An opinion shared by the president of the LR group, Bruno Retailleau, and by the leader of the centrists, Hervé Marseille.
In the event of a disagreement between the two Chambers, the parliamentary shuttle will continue. If, on the other hand, the Senate ends up adopting the text in the same terms as the Assembly, Parliament will meet in Congress in Versailles on March 5 to validate the constitutionalization of abortion. It would then be a first for Emmanuel Macron who, since his election in 2017, has never succeeded in changing the French constitution.
