France Becomes First Country With Abortion Rights In Constitution

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

PARIS/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – France became the world’s first country to enshrine abortion rights in its constitution on Monday, despite appeals from church leaders to reconsider the move.

Legislators from the upper and lower houses of Parliament were summoned by French President Emmanuel Macron for a historic session in the Palace of Versailles, near Paris.

French parliamentarians from the Senate and the lower National Assembly quickly cleared the three-fifths majority needed to amend the constitution.

The overwhelming 780-72 vote saw a standing ovation in the parliament in Versailles when the result was announced.

President Macron welcomed the revision of the country’s 1958 constitution to enshrine women’s “guaranteed freedom” to abort.

He said the move was “French pride” that had sent a “universal message,” referring indirectly to the United States, where the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade ruling of 1973 that legalized abortion nationwide.

Earlier, French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti said before the debate began in the National Assembly in January that history was full of other examples where “fundamental rights” were believed to be safe but then taken away “as the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court recently reminded us.”

EIFFEL TOWER

He added, “We now have irrefutable proof that no democracy, not even the largest of them all, is immune.”

Soon after Monday’s vote, the Eiffel Tower landmark in the heart of Paris lit up the night sky with the message “My body my choice” after Monday’s vote on Monday

Women activists were seen embracing each other.

France legalized abortion in 1975, following a campaign by then-Health Minister Simone Veil, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, or Shoah, who was one of France’s most vocal feminists.

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said before the vote that lawmakers had a “moral debt” to women who were in the past “forced” to endure illegal abortions.

“Above all, we’re sending a message to all women: your body belongs to you,” Attal added.

Yet, the French Bishops’ Conference said it was “saddened” by the developments as abortion “remains an affront to life in its beginnings.”

‘WOMEN’S RIGHTS’

They added that the procedure “cannot be seen solely from the perspective of women’s rights.” Bishops and others say there should be more attention to the unborn who can’t defend themselves.

That view was also shared in the Silent Scream, a 1984 anti-abortion film created and narrated by Bernard Nathanson, a former abortion provider who became an anti-abortion activist.

Produced by Crusade for Life, Inc., an evangelical anti-abortion group, it depicts the abortion process via ultrasound and shows an abortion taking place in the uterus.

During the process, the fetus was described as appearing to make outcries of pain and discomfort, though the video was criticized as “misleading” by abortion-defending doctors and activists.

Amid the controversy, President Macron and others had been reluctant to make abortion a constitutional right, saying the measure wasn’t needed given the broad support for “reproductive rights.”

They could also argue that France’s constitutional council, which checks the constitutionality of laws, never expressed concerns. In a 2001 ruling, the council based its approval of abortion on the notion of liberty enshrined in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man, which is technically part of the Constitution.

However, campaigners said that in 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Roe v. Wade and let states individually decide on the issue, France “was pushed” to act.

While France is part of the European Union, at least one EU member country, Hungary, wasn’t expected to follow its example. Hungary enshrined in its new constitution that the life of a fetus “is protected from the moment of conception,” while marriage is defined as “between one man and one woman.”

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