for feminist activists, a “right” more than a “freedom”

Emmanuel Macron wants to guarantee “the freedom of women to resort to voluntary termination of pregnancy”.

Emmanuel Macron announced on Wednesday March 8, 2023, on the occasion of International Women’s Rights Day, his desire for IGV to be enshrined in the Constitution. “We feminists are very happy about it because rights are never acquired”, reacts hot Claire Charlès, of the collective Les Effrontées, which aims in particular to “promote equality between women and men.” She is in the Parisian procession which parades between Republic and Nation, for the international day of women’s rights, while at the same time, Emmanuel Macron pays a national tribute to the feminist lawyer Gisèle Halimi. And when Claire Charlès hears that Emmanuel Macron pronounces the words “abortion” And “Constitution”this is good news for her. “But now, it’s obvious that it’s not going to be enough because today, access to abortion is so restricted that we end up with women who are going to have an abortion out of time”, she nuances.

>> Abortion in the Constitution: Emmanuel Macron’s very particular choice of words

In the procession, upon hearing the words of the President of the Republic, feminist activists realize that Emmanuel Macron is not talking about “guaranteeing the right to abortion”, but only about “the freedom of women to resort to voluntary termination of pregnancy to solemnly assure that nothing can hinder or undo what will be irreversible”.

“We don’t play on words”

“It’s not what we wanted, it has no interest, the law exists”storms Danielle Gaudry, a historical activist of the movement for the freedom of abortion and contraception in the 70s. She is formal, “the Constitution must guarantee the law, we are not playing on words. A political change can completely, as we have seen in the United States, change the law”, she warns.

Claudine Monteil, historian, was close to Simone de Beauvoir. She was 21 when she signed the Manifesto of 343 women who called in 1971 for the legalization of abortion. For her, “it is absolutely necessary to include this project, this ‘right’ to abortion or this ‘freedom’ in the Constitution”, she reacts on franceinfo, Thursday. But if she thinks “the word ‘right’ is much more appropriate than the word freedom”, Claudine Monteil wants to be pragmatic: “If the word ‘freedom’ can give the project the possibility of being adopted, then it must be done.”

For many feminist activists, abortion is therefore threatened and even today, not quite applied in France, according to Sonia Bisch of the StopVOG collective (Stop obstetrical and gynecological violence). “In fact, we realize that there are many doctors who do not respect the law and that there are many women who have difficulty, in France, in 2023, to access abortion. And that’s not normal.” StopVOG receives 200 reports of obstetrical and gynecological violence per month, many of which during voluntary terminations of pregnancy.


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