50 years after Gisèle Halimi's plea before the Bobigny court, which paved the way for the law on voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion), the deputies validated on Wednesday in committee a constitutional bill which aimed to register the right to abortion in the Constitution.
Objective: to guard against possible challenges such as those observed in particular in the United States.
"No woman can be deprived of the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy": the short text adopted on Wednesday, carried by the leader of the Renaissance deputies, Aurore Bergé, must now be examined in the hemicycle the week of November 28 .
Another text proposing to include this right in the fundamental law, proposed by his counterpart from La France insoumise, Mathilde Panot, must arrive in the hemicycle before, on November 24, after a passage in the law commission scheduled for November 16.
“Whatever the group that will have proposed this initiative”, Aurore Bergé was delighted that a majority “seems to emerge in the Assembly” on this subject.
.@auroreberge defends his bill to include the right to #abortion in the Constitution: "The national and especially international context poses an increasingly worrying threat to the right to abortion and requires this additional protection ".
#DirectAN pic.twitter.com/3TUQI85cCX
— LCP (@LCP) November 9, 2022
“It is neither for the symbol, nor by political opportunism, it is because it is up to us today to take this decisive step together”, pleaded the deputy, specially returned to the Assembly to defend his text. , after giving birth at the end of October.
"I will find my daughter right after", she launched to the address of those "who would wonder about her presence".
Reluctance on the side of the National Rally and the Republicans
His initiative was announced in June, in the wake of a resounding decision by the highest court in the United States, which had weakened the right to abortion for American women.
Defenders of the inclusion of the right to abortion in the Constitution, in the presidential majority as well as on the left, point out that this achievement is also weakened in European countries, citing in particular Poland.
Left-wing deputies pleaded, without success, for a right to contraception to also be included in the Constitution, as proposed in the text tabled by LFI.
Elected LR and RN officials, on the other hand, expressed reluctance regarding the text adopted on Wednesday.
“The right to abortion is absolutely not threatened in France”, thus argued the deputy RN Pascale Bordes, criticizing a formulation which “suggests that access would be unconditional and absolute”.
Deputy LR Virginie Duby-Muller asked that the constitutionalization of the right to abortion be accompanied by that of "respect for all human beings from the beginning of life for the sake of balance", an amendment rejected.
LR also considered that the text of the deputies "cannot succeed", after the Senate rejected on October 19 at first reading a similar bill.
However, any proposal for a constitutional law must be voted on in the same terms by the two assemblies, before being submitted to a referendum.