French deputies voted Thursday in favor of the inclusion of the right to abortion in the Constitution, a “historic vote” according to the supporters of the project, who intend to “speak to the world”, dedicating the text to women in the United States , Poland and Hungary, countries where this right is questioned.
“The Assembly speaks to the world, our country speaks to the world”, launched the president of the far left group La France Insoumise (LFI) Mathilde Panot.
After the vote, deputies from the left and from the presidential camp rose twice to applaud, while those from the right and extreme right remained seated.
The president of the far-right group Rassemblement national (RN) Marine Le Pen was absent from the hemicycle “for medical reasons” and did not take part in the ballot.
The elected representatives of the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament, voted by a large majority, by 337 votes against 32, for a compromise text in the hope of obtaining the approval of the Senate, the upper house, essential to a constitutional revision.
A supporter of Emmanuel Macron, Sacha Houlié, the president of the Law Commission, welcomed a “big step”. “But this is only a first step,” he recalled, mentioning the need to convince the Senate.
The left and the presidential majority agreed at midday on a common wording: “The law guarantees […] equal access to the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy”.
In France, abortion was decriminalized in 1975, but according to associations, although legal for half a century in France, abortion remains largely taboo there.
For Sarah Durocher, the co-president of Family Planning, an association whose objective is sex education and the fight for the right to contraception, “there is always a lot of guilt, stigmatization”.
Especially since in Europe, as in the United States, sometimes a headwind blows against the right to abortion, as in Hungary where the rules have been tightened.
In Italy, civil rights activists now fear a setback. Far-right head of government Giorgia Meloni said in September, before her election, she wanted to “give the right to women who think abortion is the only choice they have, to make a different choice.”