To move towards a “historic” inclusion of abortion in the Constitution, the Assembly largely approved during the night from Wednesday to Thursday the notion of “guaranteed freedom” for women to access it, a vote which will have to be confirmed Tuesday in order to send the ball to the Senate. After often bitter debates between the majority and the left on one side, and LR elected officials on the other, 99 deputies voted for the single article of the constitutional revision project. It will be considered adopted in the Assembly on January 30 if it obtains a new green light during a solemn vote, which there is little doubt.
The presidential camp, and the left-wing and Liot deputies present brought their votes, like two LR deputies and two RN. Thirteen deputies voted against (4 LR, 8 RN and one non-registered). “Abortion is not a freedom like any other, because it allows women to decide their future,” said Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti at the opening of the debate. “The law determines the conditions in which the freedom guaranteed to women to have recourse to” an IVG is exercised: through this formulation the executive hopes to find a way between the Assembly, which had voted at the end of 2022 an LFI text for enshrine a “right” to abortion, and the Senate, which narrowly validated a few months later the inclusion of a “freedom” in the Constitution.
LFI calls for a “historic victory”
Because the path chosen for a constitutional revision requires that both chambers adopt the same text, before it is submitted to a vote in Congress bringing together parliamentarians, and requiring 3/5th of the votes. “Our country cannot side with Trump’s United States, or Orban’s Hungary. The crows are at our doors and we will not leave our bodies,” launched environmentalist MP Marie-Charlotte Garin. Despite regrets on the left over the abandonment of the term “rights” or the absence of reference to contraception, Mathilde Panot (LFI) called for a “historic victory” over the “anti-rights (who) sit ( …) to the extreme right.
“There is no question of our political family calling into question access to abortion,” retorted Pascale Bordes (RN), criticizing an “inappropriate and useless” reform.
“We will take the time”
The debates turned sour in the evening, in particular during the examination of LR amendments to return the legal period for abortion to 12 weeks (compared to 14 currently). Reproaching the majority for not committing against a hypothetical significant extension of the legal duration, Thierry Breton (LR) accused it of behaving like a “trailer of Family Planning”, causing a reaction on the left and among the Macronists. Defending the association, “independent”, the Renaissance rapporteur Guillaume Gouffier Valente retorted that he had not seen “the slightest amendment requesting an extension” on the left or among the Macronists, but several which “attack access to right to abortion” coming from the right.
Basically, Eric Dupond-Moretti tried to respond to the LRs who see in the “guaranteed freedom” formula a breach for an extension of the legal duration, without the Constitutional Council being able to oppose it. The revision will not create an “absolute and unlimited right”, he insisted. Invoking a “balance” of the Veil law between women’s freedom and “protection of the unborn child”, LR deputies pleaded to constitutionalize the “safeguarding of human dignity” and the conscience clause for caregivers refusing to practice health care. ‘Abortion.
“We will take the time necessary to complete this review”
In a deaf dialogue, the minister insisted that they were secured by decisions of the Constitutional Council, calling for respecting the “balance of the text”, but without succeeding in convincing them. Any change would have consequences on the schedule. For a Congress to be convened, the Senate would have to approve on February 28 this notion of “guaranteed freedom”, which is raising eyebrows among executives on the right. And the senatorial right, reluctant to give gifts to the executive, had experienced as pressure the fact that the government suggested in December the date of March 5 to convene the Congress, which would suppose that the Senate approved the government’s drafting .
“We will take the time it takes to complete this review,” promised by Emmanuel Macron, Eric Dupond-Moretti tried to clear mines on Wednesday. If the Senate again passes a different version of the Assembly, the parliamentary shuttle would resume.