From the United States to Spain, from Chile to Germany, here is how the international media are commenting on “the historic day” experienced in France on Monday.
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“French enshrines Abortion rights”, Write the New York Times. “França é primeiro pais a elevar o direito ao aborto à Constituiçao”, title O Globo. From the United States to Brazil, from Spain to the United Kingdom, from Italy to Japan… On Tuesday, March 5, the entire foreign press welcomed the introduction of voluntary termination of pregnancy.” (IVG) in the French Constitution. “A historic moment”, “a promise for women around the world”, but also an alert for certain countries where this fundamental right “still doesn’t exist”. Newspaper.
“A historic decision”
It is a sequence which marked the journalists of the Washington Post. When the results of the vote in Versailles were announced on Monday afternoon, the hundreds of people gathered on the Place du Trocadéro suddenly hummed “Who runs the world? Girls” (“Who dominates the world? Girls”), the tube by Beyoncé. Because at that moment, France made of abortion “a constitutional right”enthuses Guardian. Besides, “L“France is the first country in the world to defend the freedom of abortion by including it in its Constitution”rightly recalls El Pais, Quoted by International mail. The Spanish newspaper seems to have appreciated this “solemn and moving ceremony, in the august setting of the hemicycle of the south wing of the Palace of Versailles, symbol of the absolute power of Louis XIV, the Sun King, and of greatness, French greatness.”
In Brazil, daily life O Globo published a large photo of the Congress in Versailles, and titled it as follows: “In a historic decision, France becomes the first country to explicitly protect the right to abortion in the Constitution.” In Italy, Corriere della sera relates that“en France, abortion becomes a right protected by the Constitution” and evokes “a promise for women everywhere.”
“A strong signal to women around the world”
“Nothing and no one can take away from French women the right to end an unwanted pregnancy in the near or distant future,” greet Die Welt. But the French vote is, in fact, also, “A strong signal from Macron to women around the world. A signal, continues the German daily, “to all Western countries where this right laboriously won in the 1970s was subsequently called into question or withdrawn”. That is why “Germany, where the right to abortion still does not exist, should feel challenged, estimated Die Welt. This right was taken away from citizens of the GDR during reunification.
The Italian daily La Repubblica, he sees in this debate “a clash with the Vatican”, who opposes everything “right to take human life”. In recent years, several European countries, including Poland and Hungary, have restricted access to abortion.
France, a model to follow
Our colleagues from Die Welt want to believe it. “The commission set up by the federal government to clarify the question of illegality will hopefully follow the French determination,” writes the German newspaper. The historic vote in Versailles was also welcomed 11,000 kilometers away, all the way to South America. The newspaper Clarin recalls the Chilean precedent. “Before France, Chile had already tried to introduce the right of women to voluntary termination of pregnancy in its draft new Constitution in 2022.” But Chileans rejected it in a referendum in 2022.
So, why France and not the others? THE New York Times has a hypothesis. “Unlike the United States, the issue of abortion in France is not politically charged and does not give rise to strong divisions, analyzes the American newspaper. On the contrary, most French people believe that abortion is a basic public health service and a woman’s right.
Monday’s French vote comes almost two years after the US Supreme Court suspended recognition of the procedure as federal law. Since June 2022, cEach American state is now free to prohibit abortion on its soil. Moreover, the Wall Street Journal recalls that it was the repeal of the Roe vs Wade judgment which prompted Emmanuel Macron to “make abortion an irreversible right in France”. “Yes, the freedom to abort remains threatened, our rights are intrinsically threatened, intrinsically fragile, declared Prime Minister Gabriel Attal in Versailles. Before adding this: “Talk about it to American women who have to fight for the right to abortion, who have gone from carelessness to anxiety.”