When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade [qui protégeait le droit à l’interruption volontaire de grossesse (IVG) dans tout le pays]a quote attributed to Simone de Beauvoir was quick to circulate on French social networks: “Never forget that all it takes is a political, economic or religious crisis for women’s rights to be called into question. These rights are never acquired. You will have to remain vigilant throughout your life.”
If French women are vigilant, it is also because France has closely followed the United States on abortion and other women’s rights. In 1964, the Supreme Court rendered a historic judgment granting married couples access to contraception. France authorized the pill, for all women, two years later. The Supreme Court issued its decision on Roe in 1973. Two years later, France decriminalized abortion by passing the Veil law, named after the Minister of Health [Simone Veil] who defended this device.
No serious political threat
But today, the two countries diverge. In March, while in the United States, a revocation of the Roe judgment was looming, the National Assembly extended the Veil law by authorizing abortions up to fourteen weeks of pregnancy (i.e., in practice, 16 weeks after the last rules). The new text followed a 2020 parliamentary report estimating that, each year, no less than 4,000 French women had an abortion abroad, their pregnancy having exceeded the legal threshold of twelve weeks.
And Saturday, June 25, the day after the revocation of the Roe judgment vs Wade, the deputies of the presidential party, the Republic on the move, – supported by the Prime Minister – proposed to include the right to abortion in the Constitution. And this even though no party is seriously threatening abortion in France. A left-wing coalition hastened to propose a similar constitutional amendment. The moderate right-wing party, Les Républicains, supposed to represent among others the traditional Catholics, is only a shadow of itself. Even Marine Le Pen, the president of the National Rally, who had repeatedly spoken out against abortion, no longer sees the advantage of doing so.
How did the United States and France, after initially following the same path, end up with such different results?
Bibia Pavard, historian at Panthéon-Assas University [à Paris], argues that early moves to legalize abortion were very similar in both countries. Some French and American activists were even in contact with each other. The historian explains to me that the two countries had roughly the same conception of the issues of abortion. It was about “the liberation of women, of this idea that women should freely dispose of their bodies, but it was also a question of public health, clandestine abortions being very dangerous”.
Religion as a fundamental divisive factor
The fundamental difference was religious. France in the early 197s