French lawmakers hold vote to make abortion a constitutional right

Abortion rights are more widely accepted in France than in the United States and many other countries, with polls showing around 80% of French people support a woman's right to an abortion. "France is at the forefront," the head of the lower house of parliament, Yael Braun-Pivet, said as she opened a joint meeting of the lower and upper houses of parliament under the gilded ceilings of the Versailles palace.

French lawmakers gathered on Monday for a vote to include the right to abortion in the constitution, a world first welcomed by women's rights groups as historic and harshly criticised by anti-abortion groups. Abortion rights are more widely accepted in France than in the United States and many other countries, with polls showing around 80% of French people support a woman's right to an abortion.

"France is at the forefront," the head of the lower house of parliament, Yael Braun-Pivet, said as she opened a joint meeting of the lower and upper houses of parliament under the gilded ceilings of the Versailles palace. "I'm proud of this congress, which will say that the right to get an abortion will now be part of our basic law," she said.

The U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 decision to reverse the Roe v. Wade ruling that recognised women's constitutional right to abortion prompted activists to push France to become the first country to clearly protect the right in its basic law. "This right (to abortion) has retreated in the United States. And so nothing authorised us to think that France was exempt from this risk," said Laura Slimani, from the Fondation des Femmes rights group.

The move, which has broad political support, is widely expected to get the three-fifths majority it needs in the joint vote of the two houses of parliament at around 1730 GMT. "There's a lot of emotion, as a feminist activist, also as a woman. And there's a lot solemnity in a certain way, since we're going to live through a historic moment, I hope," Slimani said.

ABORTION RIGHTS Still, the vote is not exempt from criticism.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen said French President Emmanuel Macron was using it to score political points due to the massive support for the right to abortion in the country. "We will vote to include it in the Constitution because we have no problem with that," Le Pen told reporters.

It was an exaggeration to call it a historic step, however, because "no one is putting the right to abortion at risk in France," she said. Women have had the legal right to abortion in France since a 1974 law, which many harshly criticised at the time.

Monday's vote is expected to inscribe - in Article 34 of the French constitution - that "the law determines the conditions in which a woman has the guaranteed freedom to have recourse to an abortion". "We're sending a message to all women: your body belongs to you and no one can decide for you," Prime Minister Gabriel Attal told lawmakers.

However, Pascale Moriniere, president of the Association of Catholic Families, called the move a defeat for anti-abortion campaigners. Moriniere said there was no need to add the right to abortion to the constitution.

"We imported a debate that is not French, since the United States was first to remove that from law with the repeal of Roe v. Wade," she said. "There was an effect of panic from feminist movements, which wished to engrave this on the marble of the constitution." (Additional reporting by Tasilo Hummel; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Bernadette Baum)

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