Members of the French National Assembly, including conservatives such as Marine Le Pen, have voted overwhelmingly in favour of enshrining “the freedom to have an abortion” in the constitution of the Fifth Republic. Only a handful of conservative MPs and independents resisted and voiced their opposition. The bill must now be approved by the Senate, where the opposition is expected to be stronger.
A few months ago, President Emmanuel Macron said he was in favour of enshrining the right to abortion in the constitution, and a government-initiated bill was submitted to MPs. It follows previous bills, initially put forward by left-wing MPs, to provide a French response to the end of the Roe v. Wade ruling in the United States.
The Left seized the opportunity offered by this American event to claim that the practice of abortion was “in danger” in France, and that the best response was to enshrine it in the constitution. The alleged ‘endangerment’ of abortion in France is in fact no more than a pretext, since the latest statistics prove that the number of abortions has been steadily rising in France for several years.
A few days before the vote in the National Assembly, the President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, a member of the centre-Right Les Républicains party, said he was hostile to the inclusion of abortion in the Constitution, on the grounds that the Constitution was a fundamental text defining the rules for the exercise of power and was not intended to become a “catalogue of social and societal rights.” His words of authority had no effect on the MPs, who voted overwhelmingly in favour of the bill on Tuesday, January 30th.
In all, 493 French MPs validated the inclusion in the Constitution of “the freedom guaranteed to women to have recourse to a voluntary interruption of pregnancy,” in the official words. The idea of ‘freedom,’ rather than ‘right,’ is the result of debates that took place during the examination of previous bills. The senators succeeded in imposing the term ‘freedom,’ which they considered more morally acceptable than a ‘right’ to abortion. The draft constitutional reform drawn up by the government retained this formula.
The 493 MPs included the whole of the Left: socialists, greens and also members of Macron’s Renaissance group, who voted unanimously. On the Right, the parliamentary groups were divided. Only 30 MPs voted against the bill, from the ranks of Les Républicains (15 MPs), Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (12 MPs), and the independents. Some figures on the Right chose to abstain, including sovereignist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan and 14 RN MPs.
It is worth noting that prominent figures from the LR and RN parties voted in favour: Éric Ciotti, current president of the Les Républicains party, who has never hidden his support for abortion as a ‘fundamental right for women,’ and Marine Le Pen, leader of the RN MPs. With this vote, she is clearly demonstrating her desire to blend in with the dominant system of values, whereas an abstention could at the very least have shown her disapproval of the principle of enshrining abortion in the constitution—if not a more polemical opposition to abortion. On this precise point, Les Républicains, with Gérard Larcher’s statement, will have shown more flexibility and intelligence, while sending a signal to Emmanuel Macron that not everything is possible politically.
Marine Le Pen had chosen to give her parliamentary group a free vote on such a sensitive issue. As a result, the vote on Tuesday, January 30th clearly reveals a progressive core within the Rassemblement National, and a conservative core which includes several figures from the south of France, such as Marie-France Lorho or Hervé de Lépinau—Marion Maréchal’s former deputy candidate in 2012, when the latter was elected MP for the Front National.
The next stage is for the Senators to examine the draft constitutional reform. In his statement on January 23rd, Senate President Gérard Larcher invited his fellow Les Républicains senators to block the bill. This would be a way for them to demonstrate their hostility towards Emmanuel Macron and his party, especially after Rachida Dati’s departure from the ranks of LR to join Attal’s government, which caused a great deal of resentment internally.
Bruno Retailleau, leader of the LR group in the Senate, also voiced his hostility, criticising in particular the final wording of ‘guaranteed freedom:’ “For some people, guaranteed freedom means a right. And that’s not at all what was discussed a few months ago,” he warned on Public Sénat in the wake of Larcher’s statement.
It remains to be seen whether the direction indicated by Larcher and Retailleau will be followed. In the event of a deadlock in the Senate, Emmanuel Macron would be unable to convene both chambers in Congress to definitively validate the constitutional reform.
