Emmanuel Macron confirmed on Friday his desire to include the “freedom to resort to” abortion “in the charter of fundamental rights of the European Union” where, according to him, “nothing is taken for granted and everything must be defended “. “We will lead this fight on our continent, where reactionary forces first and always attack the rights of women before then attacking the rights of minorities, of all the oppressed, of all freedoms,” declared the head of state during a public ceremony at Place Vendôme.
Previously, the Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti had put the seal of the Republic on the law including abortion in the French Constitution, voted by an overwhelming majority on Monday by Congress.
This official sealing, in front of several hundred people who came to attend the event under a radiant sun, punctuates “a long fight for freedom” punctuated “with tears, dramas, broken destinies”, recalled Emmanuel Macron, welcoming the memory of the “fighters” Simone Veil, Gisèle Halimi and Simone de Beauvoir, among others. The President of the Republic, who committed a year ago, to the day, to constitutionalizing abortion, also mentioned several left-wing deputies and senators who brought the text to Parliament, notably the rebellious Mathilde Panot and the ecologist Mélanie Vogel – whom Prime Minister Gabriel Attal had not cited at Congress last Monday in Versailles.
“We will fight for this right to become universal and effective”
This outcome is, however, “not the end of a story”, said Emmanuel Macron, “as long as the promise of equality is not kept for humanity”. “Beyond Europe, we will fight for this right to become universal and effective,” he promised, assuring that “we will only find rest when this promise is kept everywhere in the world.”
After this speech, warmly applauded by the crowd, singer Catherine Ringer performed a Marseillaise slightly modified for the occasion in the last verse: “To arms citizens, let us march, let us sing this pure law in the constitution”.
The head of state then lingered on the square, shaking hands and taking selfies before praising to the press a “humanist and universal reform” which “will make this right irreversible in our country”. “We are opening a path,” he said, defending his ambition to bring the subject to the European level: “If we do not fight, there is no chance of winning them.”
Asked about a possible contradiction between abortion and his objective of “demographic rearmament” stated at the start of the year, Emmanuel Macron castigated “complete mental confusion”. “We are not going to achieve demographic reconquest by taking away women’s rights. No, it is not by returning to the Middle Ages that we will be able to face this challenge,” he insisted.