2024-02-29 04:50:07
The Senate before the vote on the inclusion of abortion in the Constitution, in Paris, February 28, 2024. STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP
A strong emotion runs through the aisles of the Senate hemicycle. This Wednesday, February 28 marks “a new page in women’s rights”, proclaims the Keeper of the Seals, Eric Dupond-Moretti. Standing, the left-wing elected officials applaud. The right is being discreet. The Senate has just adopted the bill which aims to include in article 34 of the Constitution that “the law determines the conditions under which the freedom guaranteed to a woman to have recourse to a voluntary termination of pregnancy is exercised [IVG] ».
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A historic vote which opens the way to the meeting of Parliament in Congress, in Versailles, where a three-fifths majority will be necessary to include this right to resort to abortion in the Constitution. Immediately, Emmanuel Macron sent out a message on to confirm the holding of the Congress, Monday March 4: “I am committed to making women’s freedom to have an abortion irreversible by enshrining it in the Constitution. After the National Assembly, the Senate is taking a decisive step which I welcome. »
This is the culmination of a parliamentary journey that began on November 24, 2022, with the vote in the National Assembly on a bill proposed by Mathilde Panot, the president of the La France insoumise (LFI) group. A text in reaction to the shock wave caused by the decision of the American Supreme Court to revoke the federal right to abortion, on June 24, 2022.
A consensus then emerged, including in the Senate, where, to everyone’s surprise, the bill was adopted in February 2023, thanks to an amendment from senator (Les Républicains, LR) of Manche Philippe Bas, former collaborator of Simone Veil. Exit “the effectiveness and equal access to the right to abortion”the Senate’s formulation retained that “the law determines the conditions under which a woman’s freedom to terminate her pregnancy is exercised.” It is this statement which was taken up by the government after Emmanuel Macron’s decision to include abortion in the Constitution through a constitutional bill, making it possible to avoid the referendum.
Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers The outcome of the debate on the inclusion of abortion in the Constitution, a first test for the government
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“A compromise text”
In the space of a year, the lines have moved at the Luxembourg Palace. More than a hundred votes separate the first vote (166 votes for, 152 against) from this last vote (267 for, 50 against). “What we are voting for today is in the spirit of the Veil law, it is a compromise text”underlined the senator (Socialist Party) of Val-de-Marne Laurence Rossignol, a fervent supporter of constitutionalization. “Never again the angels, the hangers, the needles (…). Let us say to our daughters, to our nieces, to our granddaughters: you are today and henceforth forever free to choose your lives”for her part declared the senator (Europe Ecologie-Les Verts) of French people established outside France Mélanie Vogel.
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