The National Assembly again approved Tuesday, November 30, after a split debate, the extension of the legal deadline for performing an abortion to 14 weeks of pregnancy instead of 12.
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This provision was adopted by 63 votes against 30 and 6 abstentions within the framework of the examination in second reading, started Monday, of a bill "
aimed at strengthening the right to abortion
".
The text was adopted in October 2020 in the Assembly before being rejected in the Senate, and a final adoption under the current legislature remains uncertain.
The government for its part has not commented, issuing only a "
wisdom opinion
" on all the provisions of the text.
The Minister of Health Olivier Véran, a doctor by training, however, said he was personally in favor of this extension of the legal deadline.
"The right of women to dispose of their bodies"
The opponents of the measure have multiplied the interventions Tuesday to underline, like Fabien Di Filippo (LR), that with the growth of the embryo between 12 and 14 weeks "
the act of abortion changes nature
" , with "
gynecological consequences which can be serious
". Several right-wing MPs have pleaded for better access for women to abortion within the current deadline, rather than its extension. The co-rapporteur Albane Gaillot (non-registered, ex-LREM), replied that this measure was "
not a fad of a feminist activist
" but was inspired by "
meetings in the field
".
“
The subject is not technical, the subject is the right of women to dispose of their bodies,
” she pleaded.
Despite a comfortable final vote on this provision, the meeting almost changed course with the rejection of an LR amendment that would have removed it from the text.
This amendment, put to the vote by show of hands and then by the “
sit-stand
” procedure for greater accuracy, obtained an identical number of for and against.
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The session president Laetitia Saint-Paul (LREM) invoked the rule according to which a tie vote resulted in a rejection, attracting the wrath of the right-wing ranks who invoked the fact that elected officials favorable to the text had entered in the hemicycle during the vote.
MPs have yet to consider another controversial provision of the bill: the transformation of the double conscience clause that doctors can use to refuse to perform an abortion.
