Declarations of good intentions, voting in the National Assembly, in the Senate and then… nothing. The constitutionalization of abortion may have been voted by Parliament in first reading, but nothing has advanced in recent months.
“We have no news. The government could have made an announcement this Thursday on the occasion of International Abortion Rights Day, but no. It is silence,” laments environmentalist senator Mélanie Vogel to BFMTV.com.
Promise of the head of state
Emmanuel Macron, however, assured last March that he wanted to include in the Constitution “the freedom” of women to resort to this right through an important constitutional reform.
The move is intended to make the possibility of challenging abortion in the event that a political majority opposes it extremely complicated, if not impossible.
On paper, the president plays with velvet and has Parliament on his side. “It is enough,” once the two chambers agree, to take the text and submit it to a referendum.
He has opinion and current events on his side. The US Supreme Court’s decision to revoke abortion rights in June 2022 leaves a lasting impression. Subsequently, 81% of French people said they were in favor of including this right in the Constitution, according to an IFOP survey.
Macronie, rebel and RN agree
Enough to push the macronie to address the issue head-on. If the deputies of the presidential majority had rejected a previous proposal by La France insoumise on the issue in 2018, Aurore Bergé finally decided to address the issue.
The one who was then the patron saint of the Renaissance deputies. presents bill to “include respect for abortion in our Constitution”. But the rebels also want to play their card by presenting their own text.
A very rare fact: the macronie finally supports the rebels’ bill, proof of the importance of the issue.
The National Assembly, very divided on the issue, hesitated for a long time in voting in favor of the constitutionalization of abortion. Part of his troops finally said bench, after the notion of “equal access to contraception” for all women was removed from the proposed text.
“A small parliamentary miracle”
“The law guarantees the effectiveness and equal access to the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy,” we can read after the vote.
“If we think about it, it is a small miracle that we have managed to reach an agreement anyway,” admits even a Macronist deputy.
The Senate immediately took up the issue. After very heated debates, senators ended up saying yes to the inclusion of “women’s freedom” in the Constitution. A victory for the left despite the fact that the Upper House had said no to a very similar text a few months earlier.
For the Elysée, “the work” to move towards the referendum on abortion “has begun”
Since then, the text has been stalled. On paper, the version voted by the Senate should return to the National Assembly, but at the moment no date has been set.
The head of the Bourbon Palace, Yaël Braun-Pivet, and the president of the Luxembourg Palace, Gérard Larcher, certainly held talks before the summer with Emmanuel Macron about a possible revision of the Constitution, including abortion.
“The president said that the constitutionalization of abortion must be part of an institutional reform on which work has begun,” says the Elysée.
“It is not the most likely option”
On paper, the text would have to return to the National Assembly, be voted on and then presented to the French people through a referendum, after the president’s agreement.
Emmanuel Macron may periodically raise the issue of broad consultation with the French, such as during the Saint-Denis meetings, but he has never taken the step.
“Asking the French for their opinion on abortion does not seem like the most likely option to me,” a majority executive responds seriously.
Macron “measures the trauma of aborting”
Another possibility: that the government present a bill that has the capacity to have a majority in both the National Assembly and the Senate and that protects the acquired right to abortion.
In a very limited parliamentary calendar and without a strong will from the executive, the hypothesis seems unlikely. The head of state was not always very communicative on the subject.
“Abortion is an immense achievement for women and men, for the dignity and humanity of all. But I measure the trauma of aborting,” the president declared in the summer of 2021 in magazine columns. She.
Another possible fear: that of putting pressure on LR parliamentarians, both in the Senate and the National Assembly, something the government desperately needs in the absence of an absolute majority.
“In my opinion, all this has almost no chance of success,” Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti bluntly explained last November.
Source: BFM TV
