The leader of the LREM deputies Aurore Bergé announced this 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 nine minutes because an abortion has been carried out badly, in an unsafe way”, underlined on France Inter the new president of the majority group in the Assembly.
To prevent a future challenge to this right
“This also calls for us to take measures in France so that we cannot have any reversals tomorrow that could exist. This is the reason why, as of today, with my group, we are going to table a constitutional bill to include respect for abortion in our Constitution, ”added the elected representative from Yvelines, a former LR at feminist commitment.
She had notably 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 still rights that are fragile and that 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 [le droit à l’IVG] by inscribing it in the marble of our Constitution”.
The FN, which became 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.
“We do not change the Constitution as we change the law” so “it is a guarantee that we must give to women”, insisted the boss of the LREM deputies, who believes that the measure will be “widely shared on the benches of the National Assembly and the Senate.
Its bill stipulates that “no one can be deprived of the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy”.
Nupes could also table a bill
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”.
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”.