The Nupes and LREM want to table a text of law to protect the right to abortion by enshrining it in the Constitution.
The leader of LREM deputies Aurore Bergé announced on Saturday the tabling of a bill to include “respect for abortion in our Constitution”, after the historic decision of the Supreme Court of the United States to revoke this right. . Beyond the United States, this decision is “catastrophic for women in the world: you have a woman who dies every 9 minutes because an abortion has been performed badly, in an unsafe way”, underlined on France Inter the new president of the majority group in the Assembly. “This also calls for us to take measures in France so that tomorrow we cannot have any reversals that could exist. This is the reason why, starting today, with my group, we are going to submit a proposal for constitutional law to include respect for abortion in our Constitution”, added the elected representative of Yvelines, an ex-LR with a feminist commitment.
In a press release published this Saturday, the Nupes recalled that it had already proposed a law in 2019 to include the right to abortion in the Constitution. “We propose the filing of a common text to all the groups of the National Assembly who wish to protect this fundamental right by enshrining it in the Constitution as soon as possible”, can we read.
After the terrible setback in the United States and given the turnaround of the LREM group..
We, deputies of the NUPES, propose that a text common to all the political groups who want it, be tabled to protect the right to abortion by enshrining it in the Constitution! pic.twitter.com/VseTY3YeYl
— David Guiraud (@GuiraudInd) June 25, 2022
“We do not change the Constitution as we change the law”
Aurore Bergé had strongly defended the extension in France of the legal deadline for abortion, voted at the end of the previous legislature. Does she fear a challenge in France? “Unfortunately, nothing is impossible and women’s rights are always rights which are fragile and which are regularly called into question”, replied Aurore Bergé. Pointing to the new RN deputies, “fierce opponents of women’s access to abortion”, she judged that it was not necessary to “take any risk in this area and therefore secure (the right to abortion) in l ‘inscribed in the marble of our Constitution’.
The FN (now RN) was for a long time radically anti-abortion. In 2011, Marine Le Pen reiterated her wish to de-reimburse abortion, then advocated the status quo on the subject, presenting herself as the first defender of women’s rights.
The boss of the LREM deputies insisted: “We do not change the Constitution as we change the law” so “it is a guarantee that we must give to women”. She believes that the measure will be “widely shared on the benches of the National Assembly and the Senate”. His bill, sent to AFP, stipulates that “no one can be deprived of the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy”. Friday evening, the leader of the Insoumis deputies Mathilde Panot had also announced that she would propose on Monday to the left alliance Nupes “to file a bill to include the right to abortion in the French Constitution”.
To read : For Macron, “abortion is a fundamental right for all women”
The very conservative Supreme Court of the United States on Friday buried a judgment which, for nearly half a century, guaranteed the right of American women to abortion but had never been accepted by the religious right. In the wake of the decision, several American states have already announced that they are taking measures to prohibit voluntary terminations of pregnancy on their territory. In France, the decision has reacted to many politicians, from left to right. Emmanuel Macron regretted the “questioning” of women’s freedoms, stressing that “abortion is a fundamental right for all women”.