Abortion: why we are going to extend the legal deadline to 14 weeks

Almost one in three women has an abortion during her lifetime and, each year, between 3,000 and 5,000 of them go abroad to perform a voluntary termination of pregnancy.

The reason ?

They have exceeded the legal deadline in France.

The latter is currently at 12 weeks, but a bill, brought by MP Albane Gaillot (EDS ex-LREM group), will be debated in the National Assembly on October 8, to raise it to 14.

A long-standing demand from feminist movements, revived by the difficulties exacerbated during the period of confinement for access to this right.

Because women are already having to deal with the many retirements of doctors practicing this medical gesture, the scarcity of abortion centers (130 closures in ten years), to which has been added the closure of borders during the health crisis and the impossibility of women to travel.

In the crosshairs: the fear of a significant increase in the number of unintended pregnancies that a longer delay could have avoided.

“In 2001, when we obtained two additional weeks over the legal deadline, we were already campaigning for 14 weeks.

12 or 14, it's the same medical gesture ”, insists Dr. Emmanuelle Piet, doctor of maternal and child protection (PMI) in Seine-Saint-Denis and member of the High Council for equality between women and men.

If she welcomes the first green light, granted to the text in committee on Wednesday, she remains cautious: "The real battle is more ideological than technical", she specifies.

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On the right, Thibault Bazin (LR) has already opposed the entire text, which also allows midwives to perform surgical abortions in addition to medical abortions, removes the double “conscience clause” or even obliges each public hospital to have an orthogenesis service.

He invokes "bioethical questions for the fetus and the woman" and the "additional health risks of late abortions".

That is to say beyond ten weeks of pregnancy.

According to the DREES (Directorate for Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics), these late abortions represent 5% of voluntary terminations of pregnancy performed in France in 2017. The deputy is not the only one in the ranks of the right to protest, and this is also the case in those of the RN.

"An essential measure for equal access to this right"

“We have noticed, over time, that the women with less difficulty come earlier and earlier for an abortion, the others later and later.

This extension of the deadline is therefore an essential measure for equal access to this right ", points out Dr Gilles Lazimi, general practitioner in Seine-Saint-Denis, activist in particular with the association SOS femmes 93." With environmentalists and walkers behind this text, it should pass, ”the doctor reflects aloud.

In committee, it obtained the support of the majority and follows a parliamentary report by the Assembly's delegation for women's rights, which also recommended this measure.

During her famous speech of November 26, 1974, which led to the law legalizing voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion) two months later, Simone Veil pretended to question while answering her own question: "Why not continue? to close my eyes?

Because the current situation is bad.

Forty-five years later, this sentence pronounced by the deputy Albane Gaillot does not make better observation, by signifying, this time, "the obstacles to the full effectiveness of this fundamental right".

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Despite the deleterious effect of the health crisis on access to abortion, Parliament and the government refused to extend the legal deadline on the grounds that such an arrangement could "not be taken lightly" , according to Olivier Véran, Minister of Health.

The bill therefore goes against the grain.

"We had alerted during confinement on the difficulties encountered by women, we had made this request for an extension of the legal deadline via a provisional law, in vain", recalls Claire Charlès, general secretary of the feminist association, Les Effronté. es And this to recall the French situation at European level.

"We are lagging behind, launches the manager bluntly.

Authorizing an abortion up to the fourteenth week, this is already the case in Spain.

In the United Kingdom, the deadline is 24 weeks, 22 in the Netherlands or 18 in Sweden.

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