This Wednesday, January 28, the Senate adopted, by 267 votes for and 50 against, the bill aimed at including the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion) in the Constitution.
And this, in the same terms as the Assembly, therefore not modifying the government's formulation.
The text was voted on with the votes of the entire left, but also of part of the right and center benches.
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From now on, the executive will therefore bring together parliamentarians from both chambers in a Congress, starting next week, in Versailles.
It should be held on Monday March 4.
Elected officials will then be responsible for voting once again on the text, which must be adopted by three-fifths of the members to be included in the fundamental law.
A meeting which should, barring any major surprises, result in the definitive adoption of this bill.
However, everything was far from being won just a few days ago for the government, which was up against strong opposition from the senatorial right over the wording of its provision.
This, which aims to modify article 34 of the Constitution, plans to add that
“the law determines the conditions in which the freedom guaranteed to a woman to have recourse to a voluntary termination of pregnancy is exercised”
.
A wording which did not suit some of the LR senators, fearing that the term
“guarantee”
could create a
“right enforceable against abortion”
.
The Minister of Justice defended himself this Wednesday before the parliamentarians of the Upper House.
“This compromise text has no side effects
,” he promised, before explaining:
“The government does not intend to create an absolute, limitless, enforceable right.
The government wants to prevent a future majority from undermining the freedom of women to control their bodies
.
Before concluding a little later:
“What if we adopted this text together?
It’s high time, isn’t it?”
.
“Strong external pressures”
A few minutes later, the motion to reject, tabled by Zemmourist senator Stéphane Ravier, came to nothing.
She receives only one favorable vote, her own.
During his speech, the atmosphere became very tense with the left-wing benches.
“From this evening, you will always have the right to vomit your abominations, but never again will you have the right to attack women's rights”
, retorts the ecologist Mélanie Vogel, while the latter accused shortly before the government and the left from
“overplaying”
to
“scaring”
each other .
A little later, the two modifying amendments tabled by Bruno Retailleau, the boss of the LR group in the Senate, and Philippe Bas, were ultimately not adopted.
Same fate reserved for that of Alain Milon, who aimed to guarantee
“respect for the conscience clause”
of health professionals called upon to
“practice the intervention”
.
It must be said that the senators from the center and the right had all received
“strong external pressure”
, says a prominent elected official from the Luxembourg Palace, in recent weeks.
“You know, sometimes, when we say things in the Chamber, we go home and our families, our children can change our votes because they find us conservative
,” confided for example a few days ago a senator UDI at
Figaro
.
“The controversy on CNews did not help us”
“The
controversy on CNews which equates abortion with a cause of mortality
has not helped us,”
admits, disillusioned, a senator LR.
“Many elected officials already saw the bashing coming, the caricatures on the out-of-date conservatives in the Senate.
This created a form of demobilization
,” confides the boss of the centrist group, Hervé Marseille, who is nevertheless unfavorable to the constitutionalization of abortion, just like Gérard Larcher, the president of the Senate, and Bruno Retailleau, the boss of the senators. LR.
The bill was largely adopted in the Assembly in January (493 votes to 30), where a large part of the right and the National Rally voted favorably.
Even the boss of the Republicans, Éric Ciotti, had pressed the green button.
This was not the first time that the two chambers had to rule on this question.
In 2023, already, the Insoumise Mathilde Panot bill had been widely adopted at the Palais Bourbon, before a text reworked by senator LR Philippe Bas was in turn validated by the Upper House.
The President of the Republic then decided to take the initiative again in a bill.
A text, which more than ever, is therefore close to achieving its goal.