The Senate environmental group plans to put on the agenda of the High Assembly on October 19, within the framework of a “niche” that it has reserved, a bill to inscribe the right to abortion and contraception in the Constitution .
Presented by Senator Mélanie Vogel, the text published on the Senate website on Tuesday was jointly signed by 114 senators from five political groups (ecologist, PS, CRCE with a communist majority, RDPI with a Renaissance majority, RDSE with a Radical majority). The presidents of the PS Patrick Kanner and RDPI François Patriat groups notably signed it, as well as the president of the communist group Eliane Assassi.
“No one can violate the right to voluntary interruption of pregnancy and contraception. The law guarantees free and effective access to these rights to anyone who requests it,” according to the text proposed by the environmental group.
“No country is immune”
It is in line with a series of parliamentary initiatives taken in response to the US Supreme Court’s landmark decision to strike down the right to abortion.
“No country is safe from a political majority likely to repeal the provisions that authorize abortion, contraception or significantly restrict access to them,” says Senator Mélanie Vogel in the statement of reasons for her bill.
In the National Assembly, the group of deputies LREM – which became Renaissance – had presented in June a draft constitutional law, supported by the government, to include “respect for abortion in our Constitution”. The Nupes leftist alliance as well.
In the Senate, dominated by the right, the CRCE group had reintroduced a 2017 bill aimed at raising abortion “to the level of the fundamental principles of the law.”
PS senators Laurence Rossignol and Marie-Pierre de La Gontrie had also introduced a bill “with the aim of constitutionalizing the right to abortion and contraception.” For his part, the LR president of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, then asked that the Constitution be touched “only with a trembling hand.”
“If this issue comes up, there will have to be a debate”, but “today there is no danger” for the right to abortion in France, he had declared.
Source: BFM TV
