For several months, France has been engaged in a process aimed at enshrining the right to abortion in the Constitution. After several attempts to halt this initiative, a government bill was planned to be submitted to the National Assembly for consideration on Wednesday, January 24th. The President of the Senate solemnly affirmed his opposition to this move.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision, French politicians have taken the view that the right to abortion is in danger in France, and that it is therefore necessary to enshrine it in the Constitution in order to protect it—transferring to French soil issues that are far removed from the American pro-life struggle.
An initial text presented on the initiative of the left-wing La France Insoumise party and intended to guarantee a right to abortion (IVG, or Interruption Volontaire de Grossesse, for Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy) was submitted at the end of 2022. It brought together a majority of MPs from the Left, Centre, and Right, including around a third of MPs from the Rassemblement National. When it reached the Senate, the text was reworded to guarantee not a ‘right’ but simply a ‘freedom’ to have an abortion.
President Emmanuel Macron was keen to get involved in an issue with societal implications likely to win him the good graces of the Left, so he interfered in the legislative process and proposed a new bill, this time with the wording of a “guaranteed freedom to have recourse” to abortion. This bill was due to be presented to MPs on Wednesday, January 24th.
Just before the bill was due to go before the National Assembly, the President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, a member of the Les Républicains party, unexpectedly declared on France Info that he was hostile to the inclusion of any right to abortion in the French Constitution. He explained that, unlike in the United States, abortion was “not under threat” in France. He added: “The Constitution is not a catalogue of social and societal rights.”
Gérard Larcher’s position is quite unusual in that, as President of the Senate, he is the second-highest-ranking official in the order of precedence in the Constitution of the Fifth Republic. By tradition, he does not vote. His voice is therefore all the rarer and all the more weighted in public debate. “By tradition, I do not vote, but I will give you a very personal opinion. In all conscience, I think that the Constitution is not that catalogue,” he reminded France Info.
Larcher’s opinion on the subject is no mystery: he is not opposed to abortion as such—he has deplored the closure of many abortion clinics in the country over the past few years—but he believes that a right or freedom to abort has no place in the text of the Constitution. Many other right-wing MPs share this view.
By speaking out in this way, he wanted above all to send a signal to Emmanuel Macron, who was a little too quick to consider that the game was won by already announcing that Congress would meet to revise the Constitution at the beginning of March, before the final version of the text is examined by the two assemblies. Politically, he is keeping up the pressure on the executive by leaving open the possibility that the senators, a majority of whom are on the Right, might block the bill. To reassure parliamentarians, the minister of justice had to promise to “take the time needed” for the constitutional review.
On the whole, French public opinion supports the inclusion of the right to abortion in the Constitution. Opponents are in the minority, and they demonstrated in Paris on Sunday, January 21st in the traditional March for Life. This year, the focus was on plans to introduce euthanasia in France, but also on enshrining the right to abortion in the constitution. Conservative journalist Charlotte d’Ornellas, speaking on CNews, highlighted one of the major issues at stake in enshrining this ‘right’ in the Constitution: the freedom of opponents of abortion, who could now easily be challenged on constitutional grounds.
Larcher’s statement was strongly criticised by supporters of making abortion rights part of the constitution. Actress Sophie Marceau took the floor to denounce him as the embodiment of a “smug, retrograde and hypocritical patriarchy.”
The vote on the bill—which was originally due to take place in the Assembly on January 24th—has been postponed until January 30th. This formal vote will take place after Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s general policy statement, which should enable as many MPs as possible to be present in the chamber, and therefore guarantee maximum commitment on a divisive issue.
