“It’s an important day for women’s rights”, rejoiced the ex-LREM deputy of Val-de-Marne Albane Gaillot during a press conference at the National Assembly, this Wednesday morning. One day came to close a “long road” : the deputies definitively adopted this Wednesday the transpartisan bill aimed at strengthening the right to abortion, with 135 votes in favor (47 against), to applause. Until the end, the opponents of the text had continued to try to block. The deputy of Hérault Emmanuelle Ménard (not registered) had thus filed a motion of preliminary rejection this Wednesday, brandishing Simone Veil and the “drama” that would constitute abortions. “The reality of your political positions is the questioning of the right to abortion.retorted the deputy La France insoumise of Seine-Saint-Denis Clémentine Autain, castigating a speech aimed at “blaming women”. This motion to reject had been largely swept away, with 120 votes (out of 140) against.
“An emblematic measure”
The text finally adopted, co-signed by eight groups and around forty parliamentarians, plans to extend the legal period for recourse to abortion to 14 weeks of pregnancy (compared to 12 until then), “an emblematic measure to respond to abortions performed abroad”, estimated Albane Gaillot, who has been carrying the text since the fall of 2020. According to several associations, each year, between 4,000 and 5,000 French women go abroad to have an abortion, mainly in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom or in Spain. The National Advisory Council on Ethics, for its part, mentions 2,000 women each year, in the favorable opinion issued in December 2020 on the subject. “I am thinking of all the women who cannot afford to leave, of those who, as in the 1970s, are forced in our country to endanger their bodies to enforce this right”, meanwhile, completed the communist deputy for Hauts-de-Seine Elsa Faucillon. For example, an abortion in the Netherlands costs on average one thousand euros, not including travel or accommodation costs, and without any possible coverage by Social Security.
The text adopted on Wednesday also plans to authorize midwives to perform voluntary surgical terminations of pregnancy. An application decree for this experiment has already been published at the end of December, so as not to “waste time”, according to Olivier Véran. Since the health law of 2016, midwives are already authorized to perform medical abortions. “They are present everywhere on the territory, this new measure can respond in part to the problems of medical desertification”, analyzed Albane Gaillot. His bill also provides that the Regional Health Agencies list in a database the professionals performing abortions, with their agreement. A post that “comes down in practice to calling into question the freedom of conscience”, warned Valérie Six, UDI deputy from the North opposed to the text. Finally, the two-day reflection period after the psychosocial consultation (compulsory for minors, but optional for adults) will be abolished.
The removal of the double conscience clause rejected
However, a major provision was left out of the text during its parliamentary journey: the removal of the double conscience clause for doctors, specific to abortion. The Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, a doctor by training, had expressed his reservations about the abolition of this specific clause in December in the hemicycle, fearing that this would “sows trouble in the medical community”, who opposes it. In recent years, several parliamentary initiatives had tried, in vain, to remove this provision, granted as a compromise to have the Veil law adopted in 1975.
Thus, the Public Health Code provides that caregivers are not “never required to perform a voluntary termination of pregnancy”. However, noted the High Council for Equality in 2013, “the possibility of recourse to the conscience clause is already generally granted to all nursing staff for all medical acts”. “This double conscience clause is stigmatizing”lamented Wednesday morning the socialist deputy for Isère and co-rapporteur, Marie-Noëlle Battistel, co-author of a parliamentary report on the conditions of access to abortion in the territory, submitted in September 2020 to the delegation to the women’s rights of the Assembly, and which pointed to a provision “archaic”. “You are still making abortion a separate medical act, when it is part of women’s lives”, protested the deputy La France insoumise of Val-de-Marne Mathilde Panot, in the hemicycle. At the podium, Albane Gaillot expressed her “hope” that elected or re-elected parliamentarians “will get back to work” on this point.
Inscription in the Constitution
In an opinion published on Tuesday, the High Council for Equality, an independent advisory body, called for the inclusion of the right to abortion in the Constitution, deploring that, forty-seven years after the Veil law, this right is “still not actually acquired”. This proposal appears in the programs of several left-wing presidential candidates, from Jean-Luc Mélenchon (La France insoumise) to Yannick Jadot (EE-LV) via Fabien Roussel (Communist Party). On the legal deadline for appeal, Roussel also recommends that France “aligns itself with the most progressive European countries”, while Philippe Poutou (NPA) advocates an extension of the deadline to twenty-four weeks, as is the case in the UK. Emmanuel Macron, for his part, has repeatedly expressed his opposition to any extension of the legal deadline beyond twelve weeks, considering that “additional deadlines are not neutral about a woman’s trauma.