Emmanuel Macron has promised to enshrine a woman’s right to an abortion in the French constitution by next year, after restrictions in other countries propelled France on a path towards unconditionally guaranteeing abortion rights.
The French president said on Sunday that his government would submit a draft text to France’s highest administrative court over the coming week, with the aim of making abortion rights constitutional by the end of the year.
“In 2024, the right of women to choose abortion will become irreversible,” he wrote on social media.
The announcement follows a promise made by Macron on 8 March, International Women’s Day, when he tweeted in response to the overturning of federal abortion rights in the US last year: “A universal message of solidarity to all women who today see this right violated: France will engrave in its Constitution the freedom of women to have recourse to abortion.”
The resolution was overwhelmingly backed in the national assembly last November before being passed in the senate in February, despite opposition from rightwing parties, which argued that France’s abortion rights were not at risk.
The revision of the French constitution is a laborious process requiring either a referendum or approval by at least three-fifths of both houses of parliament.
To avoid a referendum, the government presented its own bill, rather than one originating among lawmakers, meaning Macron can convene a special congress of both houses. Such congresses meet at the Palace of Versailles.
Abortion in France was legalised in 1975 and several laws enacted since then have aimed to improve the conditions for abortions, notably by protecting the health and anonymity of women, as well as lightening the financial burden of the procedure.
An opinion poll last year showed that 89% of respondents wanted abortion rights to be better protected under the constitution.
Anticipating the end of the process, the minister for gender equality, Bérangère Couillard, said on X: “This is a victory for all women and a strong symbol sent to other countries of the world where our rights are losing ground.”
According to government figures, 234,000 abortions were carried out in France last year.
Several political parties, from the left to centrists, began pushing for abortion rights to be written into the constitution after the US supreme court’s decision in June 2022 to overturn the Roe v Wade ruling of 1973, which recognised a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion and legalised it nationwide.
In September last year, Hungary’s far-right government made it obligatory for women to “listen to the foetal heartbeat” before they can access a safe abortion.
In Poland, which has some of the harshest abortion laws in Europe, allowing pregnancies to be ended only in the event of rape, incest or a threat to the mother’s health or life, restrictions were tightened further in 2020 when the country’s constitutional tribunal ruled that abortions on the grounds of foetal defects were unconstitutional.
Although abortion has been legal in Italy since 1978, accessing the procedure is extremely difficult owing to the high number of gynaecologists who are moral objectors. Italy’s far-right government, which came to power last October, is against abortion, although the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said the law would not be changed.
