The Versailles Congress is still far away.
But the executive has just taken a new important step in its desire to constitutionalize the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion).
In the wake of Gabriel Attal's general policy declaration on Tuesday, the National Assembly largely adopted - by 493 votes to 30 - the bill providing for the inclusion in the Constitution that "
the law determines the conditions under which “exercises the freedom guaranteed to women to have recourse to an abortion
”.
The Macronist troops and the elected representatives of Nupes unanimously voted for the text defended by the Ministers of Justice and Equality between Women and Men, Éric Dupond-Moretti and Aurore Bergé.
This was less the case on the benches of the Republicans and the National Rally, where the deputies were divided between votes for, votes against and abstentions.
To discover
Agriculture, work, health, school... What to remember from Gabriel Attal's general policy speech
“
History is full of fundamental rights, won at the cost of blood and tears, which everyone believed definitively acquired and which, in shock or indifference, were swept away
,” launched the Minister of Justice during the debates in the 'Hemicycle, in the middle of last week.
And Aurore Bergé agrees: “
There is no reason to believe that what happens around us does not also happen here
.”
At the same time, a handful of LR deputies distinguished themselves by their frank opposition to the text, believing that the right to abortion was in no way threatened in France and that the bill was therefore based "on fantasies", dixit Anne -Laure Blin (LR).
The Macronist tenors of the Assembly - namely the boss of the Lower House, Yaël Braun-Pivet, the leader of the Renaissance deputies, Sylvain Maillard, and the president of the law committee, Sacha Houlié - have also opportunely reminded that they had overwhelmingly voted against an Insoumis amendment proposing essentially the same thing in July 2018. But, since then, they have changed their minds.
Like many within the political class.
The reason, they explain, is the
“questioning”,
in several places around the world, and particularly in the United States, of the right to abortion.
Hence the vote, in October 2022, of a bill from Mélenchonist Mathilde Panot providing for constitutionalizing abortion.
Before the Senate, with an LR majority, surprisingly did the same a few months later, however qualifying this version, since only mentioning the
“freedom”
to be able to appeal.
Nevertheless, these two successive adoptions finally convinced Emmanuel Macron to announce, last November, his desire to legislate on the subject, by trying to find a
“happy medium”
between the formulations of the two Chambers.
Which could be done before spring.
A more complicated equation in the Senate
After the Assembly, it is now the turn of the Senate to work on the text, within a month.
However, the game promises to be more delicate for the executive within the Upper House.
The president of the Palais du Luxembourg, Gérard Larcher, expressed his reservations, judging that “the Constitution is not a catalog of social and societal rights
”.
An opinion shared by the boss of the LR troops, Bruno Retailleau, and by the leader of the centrists, Hervé Marseille.
Without necessarily all senators sharing this hostility.
In the event of a disagreement between the two Chambers, the parliamentary shuttle will continue.
If, on the other hand, the Senate ends up adopting the text in the same terms as the Assembly, Parliament will meet in Congress in Versailles on March 5 to validate the constitutionalization of abortion.
This would then be a first for Emmanuel Macron who, since his election in 2017, has not managed to touch the fundamental law.