Abortion: France, the largest Catholic nation, makes pregnancy termination a constitutional right

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: The Christian theology has taught the faithful—particularly over 1.3 billion Catholics—that abortion is an unpardonable sin. For centuries, the faithful have fought amongst themselves on this critical issue. Even now, the Republicans and the Democrats fight in the USA on whether abortion is a woman’s right.

Now, France, the largest Catholic nation, and the hub of several revolutions across two millennia—including the Crusades—has become the first country to make abortion a constitutional right.

French lawmakers have approved a historic Bill that would enshrine a woman’s right to an abortion in the Constitution itself. No other country in the world has granted that level of protection to the right to end pregnancy, the media reported.

A joint session of parliament at the Palace of Versailles ended on Monday with the lawmakers endorsing the Bill to anchor the woman’s right to abortion in the French Constitution, making the largest European nation the first country to explicitly protect the right to terminate a pregnancy in its basic legal articles.

The right to an abortion is implicit in the constitution of other countries around the world – Slovenia, and others in the former Yugoslavia for example, state that everyone is “free to decide” whether to bear children – but France is the only country to take it further and explicitly guarantee that right.

After the United States Supreme Court rolled back the abortion right in 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron promised the measure, which has now been added as a constitutional law.

The Elysee Palace proposed that Article 34 of the French Constitution be amended to specify that “the law determines the conditions by which is exercised the freedom of women to have recourse to an abortion, which is guaranteed.”

President Macron’s government aims to make “a woman’s right to have an abortion irreversible.”

After the vote, he said France was sending a “universal message” by defending abortion rights.

The National Assembly, France’s Lower House of Parliament, overwhelmingly approved making abortion a “guaranteed freedom” in the constitution. The country’s Upper House, the Senate, did the same last Wednesday.

A congress of both houses met at Versailles, where the lawmakers eventually gave it the three-fifths supermajority needed for a constitutional change.

“When we want to attack the freedoms of a people, we always start with that of women,” French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal told those gathered.

“Our freedoms are inherently threatened. Inherently fragile, in essence at the mercy of those who decide.”

The Bill had faced initial resistance in the right-leaning Senate. However, none of the major political parties represented in parliament questioned the right to abortion, which France decriminalized in 1975.

The US Supreme Court’s decision to reverse the Roe v/s Wadge ruling, which recognized women’s constitutional right to abortion, prompted activists to press for France to make the constitutional change.

“Unfortunately, this event is not isolated: in many countries, even in Europe, there are currents of opinion that seek to hinder at any cost the freedom of women to terminate their pregnancy if they wish,” the introduction to the bill says.

The Vatican on Monday reiterated its opposition to the drastic measure, echoing concerns already raised by French Catholic bishops.
“The Pontifical Academy for Life recalls that in the era of universal human rights, there can be no ‘right’ to take a human life,” the Vatican institution said in a statement.