France: Senate Votes To Enshrine Right To Abortion In The Constitution

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Viewed by some as responding to the United States’ reversal of a 50-year federal right to abortion, France’s Senate on Wednesday passed a bill enshrining a woman’s right to abortion under the French constitution, the Associated Press reports. The Senate passed the bill 267-50.

The US Supreme Court ruled in the 2022 case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the Constitution of the United States does not confer a right to abortion. The Dobbs decision reversed the original landmark case of Roe v. Wade (1973) and returned the abortion issue to individual states to decide.

Wednesday’s vote in the French Senate followed overwhelming approval for the proposal by France’s lower legislative house, the National Assembly, AP reports. The proposal will now be presented to a joint session of parliament which is expected to give the required three-fifths majority approval next week.

French President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement that his government is committed to “making women’s right to have an abortion irreversible by enshrining it in the constitution,” AP reports.

The government has specified that it wants Article 34 of France’s constitution amended to state that “the law determines the conditions by which is exercised the freedom of women to have recourse to an abortion, which is guaranteed,” AP said.

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