On Monday, March 4th, French deputies and senators gathered in Versailles voted by an overwhelming majority to enshrine “guaranteed freedom of access to abortion” in the Constitution of the Fifth Republic. Progressives are delighted by what they see as a victory in a universal and titanic battle against the forces of obscurantism and are already preparing their next offensive.
The case had already been made for a few weeks. A few isolated voices had been raised to protest against the plan to enshrine a right to abortion in the French constitution—an idea that had germinated in the minds of a few left-wing parliamentarians in response to the reversal in the United States of the Roe v. Wade ruling, restoring primacy to the States in matters of abortion legislation. But these voices were very weak and lacked conviction.
Two issues came together in this affair: the question of abortion itself, and the question of the relevance of enshrining a right to abortion in the French constitution. The skill of the progressives in exerting moral pressure on the issue is to have confused the two, preventing any play in the arguments, even though there could have been room for a median political strategy, i.e., to bring the constitution back to what it was originally made for—an instruction manual designed to guarantee the proper functioning of the institutions, not a catalogue of societal demands.
Personalities such as Gérard Larcher, President of the French Senate, tried to dissociate the two issues by explaining that refusing to constitutionalise abortion does not mean calling into question this so-called ‘right’ of women—to no avail. Progressivism in this area is satisfied with all or nothing.
780 MPs voted in favour of enshrining abortion in the constitution. Only 72 voted against, mainly from the Les Républicains party. A few members of the Rassemblement National (RN) and independents also resisted.
The attitude of the Rassemblement National was particularly lamentable in the homestretch of the debates. Whereas, just a few years ago, Marine Le Pen courageously spoke out against the trivialisation of abortion and what she then called “comfort abortions,” she has since chosen to write off this fight as a sacrifice to the idols of progressivism in order to appear, one day, worthy of governing. But you never win by selling your soul. The leader of the RN parliamentarians had explained internally that she wanted a unanimous vote in favour. She was unable to distinguish the two plans: the validity of the inclusion in the constitution, regardless of the fact of abortion as such. Fortunately, some people saved their honour and refused to vote against their conscience. At the European level, the RN even found a way to one-up the European Parliament president Roberta Metsola on the grounds that she was opposed to abortion.
Between the votes in the separate chambers, the National Assembly and the Senate, and the vote in Congress of the combined chambers, some gave in to the pressure and changed their minds to howl with the wolves. This is what the archbishop of Nanterre, Msgr. Matthieu Rougé, who is familiar with the world of politics from his former role as chaplain to members of parliament, condemns. In his press release, he deplores the fact that “many members of parliament, who were rather sceptical or even reserved about this constitutionalisation, have not been able to resist the pressures of the politically or media-correct.” The Archbishop of Paris, Msgr. Laurent Ulrich, criticised the idea of any kind of “freedom:” “How can we talk about freedom if abortion is basically the only option being promoted?” Respect for mothers and children and support for women in distress were conspicuously absent from the jubilant demonstrations staged by the media following the vote on the evening of Monday, March 4th.
The response from the French episcopate was belated and measured. The words “sadness” and “bitterness” were used by all the bishops. But unfortunately, one would desperately look to official communications for firmer positions to remind a political class without a moral compass of its duties. There is a whiff in the air of a battle lost before it is even fought.
In Versailles, at the time of the vote, the bells of Notre-Dame church, located just a few metres from the assembled Congress, rang out to mark the mourning of life, the mourning of childhood and innocence, the mourning of the protective and sacred asylum of the womb—which has now lost the status of ultimate refuge.
The dignity of this dark, slow bell contrasts with the sickening scenes of jubilation on the television screens at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, where a few gangs of feminist activists were struggling, convinced that they fought the noblest of battles and triumphed. Video footage overdid the staging of adulterated heroism, showing, for example, Yaël Braun-Pivet, president of the National Assembly, walking, looking sombre and inspired towards her destiny to validate the vote and set herself up as the sacred defender of ‘all women’—except for mothers in distress who would simply like help to keep their child.
On the evening of the vote, The European Conservative was interviewed on France 24 in English, alongside three women’s rights activists who were congratulating themselves on the day’s victory. They showed their concern for the “danger of the far Right.” But what danger are we talking about, when the Rassemblement National, the famous official “far Right,” has aligned itself like the others with the progressive doxa? What danger are we talking about, when the abortion figures in France are constantly rising year after year?
Supporters of constitutional abortion imagine that this vote has made France the lighthouse of nations and that all eyes are on it, demonstrating a gigantic superiority complex on the part of a country that has in fact been a pathetic follower of a debate imported from the United States in terms that have no equivalent on French soil. As a beacon for nations, France has aligned itself with the communist precedent of Yugoslavia, which in 1974 established in its constitution “a human right to decide freely on the birth of one’s children.” Is it an example we can boast of?
It was not a question of defending there the evidence that these activists have long since stopped being prepared to hear—namely that abortion is not an attack on a “woman’s body”, but the murder of a child. Instead, we wanted to remind them that to conquer without peril is to triumph without glory (à vaincre sans perils on triomphe sans gloire). No one is questioning abortion in France today, and there’s something indecent about pretending to be fighters for the impossible.
A few days ago, the CNews channel was singled out by the system for its right-wing positions on immigration and security. These positions were condemned, but tolerated nonetheless. But when one of its journalists dared to mention abortion as the leading cause of death in the world on a Sunday programme, you were able to see how quickly and energetically a denial was issued by all the channel’s journalists. A chorus of mea culpas rang out from the very people who, on other subjects, make a profession of moving the lines. We don’t touch abortion and the sacrosanct credo of “My body, my choice.” Never.
For the progressive camp that won the vote on the evening of 4 March, the roadmap for the coming months is already mapped out.
The attack on the conscience clause is already at the heart of the debate. While the freedom to have an abortion is now guaranteed by the Constitution, the freedom of the health care provider not to carry out an abortion is not. The 1975 Veil law added to the general conscience clause, which allows doctors to refuse to perform any medical procedure, a second conscience clause, motivated by morality or religion, specific to abortion. La France Insoumise, through its deputy Manuel Bompard, wants to attack this conscience clause and do away with it. Some senators wanted to protect it, but the amendment to that effect was rejected in the Senate. The day before the vote in Congress, the French Minister of Justice, Éric Dupond-Moretti, reaffirmed that the double conscience clause would be maintained: “Any doctor who does not wish to perform an abortion will obviously have the right and freedom not to. We are not going to violate people’s consciences. And that is already guaranteed by the Constitution.” A few scruples are still stirring up the small world of parliamentarians, but for how long?
The second key issue for the future is the time limit for abortion, which Planned Parenthood would like to see increased to 24 weeks of pregnancy, ideally with harmonisation of the time limits at the European level for “greater equality.” The change from 12 to 14 legal weeks for an abortion, which came into effect in February 2022 in France, did not go off without a hitch. The next battle is likely to be held with the pressure of the Constitution now being brandished to justify everything and silence all opposition.
For the time being, the conservative fight against abortion must find the right forms to make itself heard. We need to shatter the myth of performance and of ever more abortions and get people to admit that no one should be ‘happy’ about the number of abortions carried out each year. There is also a duty to break the incantation of the doers of death who want to push back the limits of their crimes ever further and then take offence at the disaffection of the medical profession, which is reluctant to carry out the deed. The abstract incantation of a women’s rights activist forgets that, to make her project of ‘liberation’ possible, a doctor must actually carry out the unspeakable. Intoxicated by their logorrhoea, activists do not care about the resistance of the facts. The doctor, on the other hand, in the concrete act of surgery, knows what happens when a child has to be expelled from its mother’s womb. This instinctive reluctance on the part of nurses and gynaecologists will not disappear by a miracle, and it is upon this reluctance that we must rely.Coincidentally, on the very day that the constitutionalisation of abortion was voted through, a news item from a year ago, which we reported here, returned to the forefront of the French news scene. In February 2023 a French comedian and actor, Pierre Palmade, caused the death of a baby in utero by hitting a pregnant mother in a car accident while driving under the influence of drugs. On Monday, March 4th, the public prosecutor requested that the trial, initially carrying the charge of “wounds,” be reclassified as “manslaughter”, because the baby killed in the accident was viable. A little person died, and against such a terrible situation, the Constitution, despite the vote of 780 members of parliament, can do absolutely nothing.
Constitutionalising Abortion: A Tragic Day for France
A message pertaining to abortion and the constitution is projected onto the Eiffel Tower after the French parliament voted to anchor the right to abortion in the country’s constitution, in Paris, on March 4, 2024.
Photo: Dimitar DILKOFF / AFP
On Monday, March 4th, French deputies and senators gathered in Versailles voted by an overwhelming majority to enshrine “guaranteed freedom of access to abortion” in the Constitution of the Fifth Republic. Progressives are delighted by what they see as a victory in a universal and titanic battle against the forces of obscurantism and are already preparing their next offensive.
The case had already been made for a few weeks. A few isolated voices had been raised to protest against the plan to enshrine a right to abortion in the French constitution—an idea that had germinated in the minds of a few left-wing parliamentarians in response to the reversal in the United States of the Roe v. Wade ruling, restoring primacy to the States in matters of abortion legislation. But these voices were very weak and lacked conviction.
Two issues came together in this affair: the question of abortion itself, and the question of the relevance of enshrining a right to abortion in the French constitution. The skill of the progressives in exerting moral pressure on the issue is to have confused the two, preventing any play in the arguments, even though there could have been room for a median political strategy, i.e., to bring the constitution back to what it was originally made for—an instruction manual designed to guarantee the proper functioning of the institutions, not a catalogue of societal demands.
Personalities such as Gérard Larcher, President of the French Senate, tried to dissociate the two issues by explaining that refusing to constitutionalise abortion does not mean calling into question this so-called ‘right’ of women—to no avail. Progressivism in this area is satisfied with all or nothing.
780 MPs voted in favour of enshrining abortion in the constitution. Only 72 voted against, mainly from the Les Républicains party. A few members of the Rassemblement National (RN) and independents also resisted.
The attitude of the Rassemblement National was particularly lamentable in the homestretch of the debates. Whereas, just a few years ago, Marine Le Pen courageously spoke out against the trivialisation of abortion and what she then called “comfort abortions,” she has since chosen to write off this fight as a sacrifice to the idols of progressivism in order to appear, one day, worthy of governing. But you never win by selling your soul. The leader of the RN parliamentarians had explained internally that she wanted a unanimous vote in favour. She was unable to distinguish the two plans: the validity of the inclusion in the constitution, regardless of the fact of abortion as such. Fortunately, some people saved their honour and refused to vote against their conscience. At the European level, the RN even found a way to one-up the European Parliament president Roberta Metsola on the grounds that she was opposed to abortion.
Between the votes in the separate chambers, the National Assembly and the Senate, and the vote in Congress of the combined chambers, some gave in to the pressure and changed their minds to howl with the wolves. This is what the archbishop of Nanterre, Msgr. Matthieu Rougé, who is familiar with the world of politics from his former role as chaplain to members of parliament, condemns. In his press release, he deplores the fact that “many members of parliament, who were rather sceptical or even reserved about this constitutionalisation, have not been able to resist the pressures of the politically or media-correct.” The Archbishop of Paris, Msgr. Laurent Ulrich, criticised the idea of any kind of “freedom:” “How can we talk about freedom if abortion is basically the only option being promoted?” Respect for mothers and children and support for women in distress were conspicuously absent from the jubilant demonstrations staged by the media following the vote on the evening of Monday, March 4th.
The response from the French episcopate was belated and measured. The words “sadness” and “bitterness” were used by all the bishops. But unfortunately, one would desperately look to official communications for firmer positions to remind a political class without a moral compass of its duties. There is a whiff in the air of a battle lost before it is even fought.
In Versailles, at the time of the vote, the bells of Notre-Dame church, located just a few metres from the assembled Congress, rang out to mark the mourning of life, the mourning of childhood and innocence, the mourning of the protective and sacred asylum of the womb—which has now lost the status of ultimate refuge.
The dignity of this dark, slow bell contrasts with the sickening scenes of jubilation on the television screens at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, where a few gangs of feminist activists were struggling, convinced that they fought the noblest of battles and triumphed. Video footage overdid the staging of adulterated heroism, showing, for example, Yaël Braun-Pivet, president of the National Assembly, walking, looking sombre and inspired towards her destiny to validate the vote and set herself up as the sacred defender of ‘all women’—except for mothers in distress who would simply like help to keep their child.
On the evening of the vote, The European Conservative was interviewed on France 24 in English, alongside three women’s rights activists who were congratulating themselves on the day’s victory. They showed their concern for the “danger of the far Right.” But what danger are we talking about, when the Rassemblement National, the famous official “far Right,” has aligned itself like the others with the progressive doxa? What danger are we talking about, when the abortion figures in France are constantly rising year after year?
Supporters of constitutional abortion imagine that this vote has made France the lighthouse of nations and that all eyes are on it, demonstrating a gigantic superiority complex on the part of a country that has in fact been a pathetic follower of a debate imported from the United States in terms that have no equivalent on French soil. As a beacon for nations, France has aligned itself with the communist precedent of Yugoslavia, which in 1974 established in its constitution “a human right to decide freely on the birth of one’s children.” Is it an example we can boast of?
It was not a question of defending there the evidence that these activists have long since stopped being prepared to hear—namely that abortion is not an attack on a “woman’s body”, but the murder of a child. Instead, we wanted to remind them that to conquer without peril is to triumph without glory (à vaincre sans perils on triomphe sans gloire). No one is questioning abortion in France today, and there’s something indecent about pretending to be fighters for the impossible.
A few days ago, the CNews channel was singled out by the system for its right-wing positions on immigration and security. These positions were condemned, but tolerated nonetheless. But when one of its journalists dared to mention abortion as the leading cause of death in the world on a Sunday programme, you were able to see how quickly and energetically a denial was issued by all the channel’s journalists. A chorus of mea culpas rang out from the very people who, on other subjects, make a profession of moving the lines. We don’t touch abortion and the sacrosanct credo of “My body, my choice.” Never.
For the progressive camp that won the vote on the evening of 4 March, the roadmap for the coming months is already mapped out.
The attack on the conscience clause is already at the heart of the debate. While the freedom to have an abortion is now guaranteed by the Constitution, the freedom of the health care provider not to carry out an abortion is not. The 1975 Veil law added to the general conscience clause, which allows doctors to refuse to perform any medical procedure, a second conscience clause, motivated by morality or religion, specific to abortion. La France Insoumise, through its deputy Manuel Bompard, wants to attack this conscience clause and do away with it. Some senators wanted to protect it, but the amendment to that effect was rejected in the Senate. The day before the vote in Congress, the French Minister of Justice, Éric Dupond-Moretti, reaffirmed that the double conscience clause would be maintained: “Any doctor who does not wish to perform an abortion will obviously have the right and freedom not to. We are not going to violate people’s consciences. And that is already guaranteed by the Constitution.” A few scruples are still stirring up the small world of parliamentarians, but for how long?
The second key issue for the future is the time limit for abortion, which Planned Parenthood would like to see increased to 24 weeks of pregnancy, ideally with harmonisation of the time limits at the European level for “greater equality.” The change from 12 to 14 legal weeks for an abortion, which came into effect in February 2022 in France, did not go off without a hitch. The next battle is likely to be held with the pressure of the Constitution now being brandished to justify everything and silence all opposition.
For the time being, the conservative fight against abortion must find the right forms to make itself heard. We need to shatter the myth of performance and of ever more abortions and get people to admit that no one should be ‘happy’ about the number of abortions carried out each year. There is also a duty to break the incantation of the doers of death who want to push back the limits of their crimes ever further and then take offence at the disaffection of the medical profession, which is reluctant to carry out the deed. The abstract incantation of a women’s rights activist forgets that, to make her project of ‘liberation’ possible, a doctor must actually carry out the unspeakable. Intoxicated by their logorrhoea, activists do not care about the resistance of the facts. The doctor, on the other hand, in the concrete act of surgery, knows what happens when a child has to be expelled from its mother’s womb. This instinctive reluctance on the part of nurses and gynaecologists will not disappear by a miracle, and it is upon this reluctance that we must rely.Coincidentally, on the very day that the constitutionalisation of abortion was voted through, a news item from a year ago, which we reported here, returned to the forefront of the French news scene. In February 2023 a French comedian and actor, Pierre Palmade, caused the death of a baby in utero by hitting a pregnant mother in a car accident while driving under the influence of drugs. On Monday, March 4th, the public prosecutor requested that the trial, initially carrying the charge of “wounds,” be reclassified as “manslaughter”, because the baby killed in the accident was viable. A little person died, and against such a terrible situation, the Constitution, despite the vote of 780 members of parliament, can do absolutely nothing.
READ NEXT
Trump Broadened the Tent; Europe Must Follow Suit
Expanding Our Reach
Christmas Market Killer Was Known to German Police, Saudi Officials