IVG in the Constitution: everything you need to know about the historic meeting of the Congress in Versailles

Deputies and senators have an appointment with History this Monday. A formula used too often wrongly, here it is rightly so. Congress should enshrine women’s guaranteed right to abortion into the Constitution. The last revision of the table of fundamental laws dates back to 2008. How will this Congress take place?

Emmanuel Macron absent

Transported from Paris to Versailles by around fifteen buses, the 925 parliamentarians will take their seats in the hemicycle of the Château de Versailles at 3:30 p.m. Deputies and senators will sit in alphabetical order and not by political group.

The President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, will open the session with a speech on women’s rights, confides one of her close friends. Then, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal will deliver a speech to represent the executive, because the texts prohibit President Emmanuel Macron from being present during a constitutional review. The rapporteurs of the text will then speak before the speakers of the 18 political groups represented in the Assembly and the Senate.

A three-fifths majority of the votes cast required

The vote will be held in rooms located next to the hemicycle where electronic ballot boxes have been installed. After three hours of sitting, if the required majority of three-fifths of the votes cast is reached, the adoption of the constitutional amendment will be authenticated by a seal of Congress during a ceremony in the aptly named Seal Room and the following words should be added to article 34 of the Constitution: “The law determines the conditions under which the freedom guaranteed to women to have recourse to a voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion) is exercised”.