After a first green light from the deputies of the law committee, the National Assembly will examine, from Wednesday January 24, the government’s constitutional reform project aimed at enshrining in the Constitution “the freedom guaranteed to women to have recourse” to voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion). It’s about making it a right “irreversible”while several countries, such as the United States, are questioning it.
The road ahead remains long: for the Constitution to be modified, the approval of deputies, during a solemn vote on January 30, will not be enough. The Senate will have to vote on the text in the same terms, before a Congress bringing together all parliamentarians in Versailles. While waiting for the outcome of these different stages, here are three figures which allow us to better understand the reality of abortion in France.
Nearly 234,300 abortions in 2022, the highest figure in 30 years
In 2022, 234,253 voluntary terminations of pregnancy (abortions) were recorded in France, the highest figure over the last 30 years, according to data from the Department of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (Drees) published in September 2023. This is 17,000 more than in 2021, after two years of successive decline due to the health crisis, and around 7,000 more than in 2019.
The counting system has also been modified since 2022: previously “reruns of abortions” were considered additional abortions, even though they concerned the same pregnancy. But “from 2022, the count of abortions takes into account only the first act for a pregnancy”explains Drees, which was also able to apply this new method in 2020 and 2021.
The Drees specifies that the extension of the time limit for recourse to abortion, from 12 to 14 weeks in 2022, “is not enough to explain this increase”because the “The latest abortions” represent “less than a fifth of the surplus observed compared to the year 2021”. Indeed, 55% of abortions in health establishments are carried out at less than eight weeks without periods and 76%, or 110,000 abortions, at less than ten weeks.
The Ministry of Health study also shows that the number of abortions has increased “for all adult women”noting “a more marked increase among 20-29 year olds”. Thus, the abortion rate is 26.9‰ among 20-24 year olds and 28.6‰ among 25-29 year olds. It is 16.2‰ among 18-19 year olds and 17.8‰ among women aged 35 to 39.
Abortion possible until the 14th week of pregnancy since 2022
In France, since winter 2022, abortion has been authorized until the end of the 14th week of pregnancy, i.e. 16 weeks after the first day of the last period. Compared to its European neighbors, the country is in the high average, with a majority of EU members setting this deadline at 12 weeks. Only the Netherlands and Sweden offer longer deadlines, 24 and 18 weeks.
However, this period is not always sufficient, estimates Family Planning. On its website, the association explains that it welcomes, “every day”women “wishing to terminate their pregnancy” because they have “exceeded the French deadline” and find themselves constrained “to go abroad to have an abortion in good conditions”.
In Malta and Poland, abortion is only permitted in cases of danger to the life of the mother or fetus. Even in countries where abortion is legal, difficulties persist. In Portugal, since 2015, the government has modified the law authorizing abortion by making women responsible for all costs linked to the termination of their pregnancy, reports the specialized site touteleurope.eu.
In addition, in 23 of the 27 member countries of the European Union (including France), doctors can invoke a “conscience clause”, which authorizes them not to perform an act that goes against their beliefs. On average, the rate of practitioners using this clause is 10%, but it varies depending on the country. In Italy, in 2020, 64.6% of gynecologists used it, according to the Transalpine Ministry of Health (PDF).
On the French side, this conscience clause is defined by article 47 of the Code of Medical Ethics, according to which “except in cases of emergency and those where he fails in his duties of humanity, a doctor has the right to refuse care for professional or personal reasons”. Even if the practitioner has the duty to “warn the patient” and transmit “useful information” to his colleague who will continue the care, this practice creates inequalities. A parliamentary report on abortion published in 2020 thus estimates that it “is no longer conceivable” that the practice of abortion is conditional on “convictions of the head of department of this or that hospital”.
Seven days of waiting on average, a deadline exceeded in six regions
In France, the average time for access to abortion is around seven days, between the first request made by the woman wishing to have recourse to it and the actual performance of the act, according to a study by the Drees published in September 2019. However, from one region to another, the wait ranges from three to eleven days and can temporarily increase, particularly during the summer period, due to holidays. If the Ministry of Health welcomes delays “shorter (close to five days on average)” in Occitanie and the Pays de la Loire, it points to average delays ranging from eight to eleven days in six of the 13 metropolitan regions.
Furthermore, this study does not detail the inequalities within these regions, made up of both large cities and rural regions. But the latter see “the number of orthogenic services [qui pratiquent l’avortement] be reduced with the gradual closure of small maternity wards”thus generating “territorial inequalities which are difficult to accept”, denounces the parliamentary report published in 2020. All in a context of medical desertification, which particularly affects maternity wards: between 1996 and 2019, their number in France and Corsica increased from 814 to 461, according to the Drees.
Some pregnant women perform an abortion in a department different from that where they live. This was the case, in 2022, of 48.3% of residents of Ain who had an abortion, notes the Drees.