It is this Wednesday that the Senate must examine the bill on the constitutionalization of the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion), a short month after its adoption by the National Assembly.
Before the text is definitively validated in Congress meeting in Versailles and voted on by a 3/5 majority, it is necessary for the senators to adopt, to the nearest decimal point, the same text as their fellow deputies.
However, the senatorial right, the majority, does not seem ready to put its stamp on the copy from the Palais-Bourbon.
Thus, the very influential senator (LR) of Manche, Philippe Bas, is not opposed to the constitutionalization of abortion... But does not want it to be done at any cost.
This Monday morning he tabled an amendment aimed at modifying the text of the deputies.
The only article of this bill currently provides for the inclusion in the Constitution of the fact that "the law determines the conditions under which the freedom guaranteed to women to have recourse to a voluntary termination of pregnancy is exercised." .
Get rid of the word “guarantee”
Philippe Bas, for his part, wishes to get rid of the word "guarantee", because he believes with a certain number of colleagues that this adjective "seems to transform this freedom into an enforceable right", confides the senator's entourage.
The risk, according to these elected officials: that the right to abortion enshrined in this way does not, for example, take away the legal period from which it is no longer possible to perform an abortion (currently 14 weeks).
Just as they fear that this will be to the detriment of the conscience clause of doctors, who would in fact be obliged to practice it.
Former collaborator of Simone Veil, Bas has always explained that he wanted to defend "the balance of the Veil law", which according to him put on an equal footing both the freedom of the woman to have an abortion, and that of the unborn child afterward. a certain delay.
Philippe Bas is supported in his approach by the president of the Les Républicains group in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau.
He shares the concerns of his colleague Bas, even if he will not vote for the constitutionalization of abortion, continuing to believe like the President of the Senate Gérard Larcher, that this right is “not threatened” in France.
Retailleau also wants the conscience clause for doctors to also be included in the text.
Also read: “Abortion remains the poor relation of medicine”: the alert from gynecologist Ghada Hatem-Gantzer
Will a majority of LR senators support their two influential colleagues?
If this deletion amendment is adopted by the Senate on Wednesday, this would therefore result in the vote on a text different from that which came out of the Assembly... thus forcing the bill to return there.
This Assembly-Senate shuttle will last as long as the two chambers do not agree on an identical wording of the constitutionalization.