Abortion enshrined as constitutional right in France in world first

France became the first country in the world to offer explicit protection for terminating a pregnancy in its basic law after its parliament voted to anchor the right to abortion in the country’s constitution.

A congress of both houses of parliament, gathered in a special chamber at the Palace of Versailles, easily found the three-fifths supermajority needed for the change, with 780 in favour and 72 lawmakers voting against.

President Emmanuel Macron described the move as a source of “French pride” that had sent a “universal message”, with a special public ceremony planned to celebrate the move on International Women’s Day on 8 March.

A message pertaining to abortion and the constitution is projected onto the Eiffel Tower. Source: AFP / Dimitar Dilkoff

The Eiffel Tower was lit up in celebration after the change was passed with the slogan “My Body My Choice”.

Such joint parliamentary sessions are extremely rare in France and called only for momentous occasions such as constitutional changes, the last of which was made in 2008.

Why France has made abortion a constitutional right

Macron pledged last year to enshrine abortion — legal in France since 1975 — in the constitution after the US Supreme Court in 2022

to the procedure, allowing individual American states to ban or curtail it.

In January, France’s lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, overwhelmingly approved making abortion a “guaranteed freedom” in the constitution.

The upper house, the Senate, followed suit on Wednesday.

A majority of the French public support the move to give the right to abortion extra protection, according to polls.

A November 2022 survey by French polling group IFOP found that 86 per cent of French people supported inscribing it in the constitution.

Celebration and protests

Left-wing and centrist politicians have welcomed the change, while right-wing senators have said in private they felt under pressure to give it a green light.

The influential speaker of the Senate, Gerard Larcher, made clear that while he backed the right to abortion he was not in favour of inscribing it into the constitution, saying the right was not under threat in France.

Several hundred abortion opponents, largely marginalised in the move for constitutional change, protested in Versailles.

Catholic bishops called for a day of “fasting and prayer” so the French could “rediscover the taste for life”.

Weighing in from Rome, the Vatican said there could be “no ‘right’ to take a human life”.

But hundreds of jubilant backers of the move also took to the Place du Trocadero in central Paris on Monday to witness the passing of the law on large video screens deployed for the event.

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