The World Briefly

March 01, 2024

Setting In Stone

France

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France’s upper house passed a bill this week to embed a woman’s right to abortion in the country’s constitution, marking a significant step toward legislation pledged by President Emmanuel Macron in response to the rollback in abortion rights across the world, the Guardian reported.

The bill’s passage comes a month after the lower house overwhelmingly approved the proposal. The draft legislation will now go to a joint session of parliament for its expected approval by a three-fifths majority next week.

Following the vote, Macron affirmed the government’s commitment to solidifying “women’s right to have an abortion irreversible by enshrining it in the constitution.”

Specifically, the government wants to amend Article 34 of the constitution to specify that “the law determines the conditions by which is exercised the freedom of women to have recourse to an abortion, which is guaranteed,” the Associated Press noted.

French lawmakers and politicians hailed the bill as a “historic” moment and “a victory for women across the world.”

Abortion has been decriminalized in France since 1975. Two years ago, the French parliament voted to extend the legal limit for ending a pregnancy from 12 to 14 weeks, following public anger that thousands of women were traveling abroad to have abortions.

The proposal to enshrine abortion into the constitution follows concerns among French leaders that abortion rights globally are at risk of being revoked or increasingly restricted.

The legislation’s introduction referenced challenges to abortion access in Europe, particularly in Poland, where a controversial tightening of abortion laws sparked widespread protests.

This story originally appeared in the March 01, 2024 newsletter, Decisions, Decisions.