Emmanuel Macron’s very particular choice of words

The weight of words. Emmanuel Macron announced on Wednesday March 8, during the national tribute to Gisèle Halimi at the Paris Courthouse, a bill “in the coming months” to register “in our fundamental text this freedom within the framework of the bill revising our Constitution which will be prepared in the next few monthss”. And the Head of State specified: “The freedom of women to resort to voluntary termination of pregnancy to solemnly assure that nothing can hinder or undo what will be irreversible“.

>> Emmanuel Macron announces a bill to include abortion in the Constitution

Speaking of “women’s freedom“, rather than a right, Emmanuel Macron knows that words count. Indeed, the right is a guarantee of being able to carry out an abortion. And an obligation of the State to allow women to access it. Freedom, on the other hand, is the ability to do or not to do, and there is a risk that the legislator will decide to restrict it. This is the limit that some legal specialists are now highlighting. But it is the option chosen by Emmanuel Macron, because “it is the most consensual“, explains his entourage.

At the beginning of February, this is the version that the senators agreed to vote on, amending a bill which planned to enshrine the right to abortion in stone in the Constitution. This text therefore returned in a different version to the Assembly. But if he had gone to the end, it would have been necessary to organize a referendum.
Emmanuel Macron chooses another way to avoid it, with a bill which should obtain 3/5 of the votes in Parliament, meeting in Congress. He therefore increases his chances of being able to associate his name with a historical evolution of the Constitution.