2024-03-05 14:31:48
Emmanuel Macron met the French people this Friday, March 8, at Place Vendôme, in Paris, to celebrate the historic entry of the right to abortion (voluntary termination of pregnancy) into the French Constitution. The president hopes for popular mobilization for this so-called sealing ceremony (in reference to the famous Seals kept by the Minister of Justice) which will enshrine the right to abortion.
With the French
This ceremony will have a strong medieval and Napoleonic accent, while being tinged with a touch of modernity. It will also and above all have a strong symbolic significance, because this last rite of passage before the entry of abortion into the Constitution will take place this March 8, a meaningful date for feminist movements: since it is about International Women’s Day.
In fact, the public is therefore invited to the event which will take place at Place Vendôme, where the Ministry of Justice is located. A first for the sealing of a constitutional act. This choice of a symbolic date and a popular presence corresponds to the desire of the Head of State to mark “the culmination of this collective fight”.
Write your seal on a law
So much for the innovative side of the ceremony, but more generally it is marked by the heritage of ancestral tradition. The sealing ceremony finds its foundations in medieval monarchical practices. Inscribing his seal on a law or legal act was a way for the king to recall the power of the State over society. A practice which has therefore been transmitted to our modern republican institutions.
Another historical heritage present for this ceremony, the press. This 300 kg machine ordered in 1810 by the jurisconsult Jean-Jacques Régis de Cambacérès was used during the Napoleonic period to mark the power of the French Empire. Not seen in public since 2013 and an exhibition at the national archives, this press will be back for the ceremony on March 8. Preciously preserved by the Ministry of Justice, the machine seems to work well.
In 2008, it allowed Rachida Dati, then Keeper of the Seals, to enact the constitutional revision of the institutions. And in 1981, it sealed the abolition of the death penalty.
Ode to the Republic
Monarchy, empire… and Republic of course. The symbols of the Republic will also be honored during the ceremony. The seal which will be affixed on Friday dates back to the Second Republic and 1848. On the front side, Marianne, icon of the Revolution, appears with all the Republican images. On the right side the words “in the name of the French people” are written next to the French motto liberty, equality, fraternity.
It is therefore with this Napoleonic press machine during a ceremony heir to the medieval age that the Minister of Justice, Éric Dupond Moretti will put a republican stamp on a resolutely feminist constitutional revision.
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