French MPs want abortion rights inscribed in constitution

A group of lawmakers from French President Emmanuel Macron’s party is proposing a bill to inscribe abortion rights into the constitution

ByThe Associated Press

June 25, 2022, 6:46 AM

PARIS — A group of lawmakers belonging to French President Emmanuel Macron’s party will propose a bill to inscribe abortion rights into the country’s constitution, according to the statement by two members of parliament on Saturday.

The move comes after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a 50-year-old ruling and stripped women’s constitutional protections for abortion.

The right to abortion in France is already inscribed in a 1975 law relating to the voluntary termination of pregnancy within the legal framework that decriminalized abortion.

A constitutional law will cement abortion rights for future generations, said Marie-Pierre Rixain, a member of parliament and of the Republic on the Move party.

“What happened elsewhere must not happen in France,” Rixain said.

The bill would include a provision that would make it “impossible to deprive a person of the right to voluntarily terminate a pregnancy,” according to the statement, released by two members of the National Assembly, France’s most powerful house of parliament.

Aurore Berge, the leader of Macron’s party group in the parliament, said the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to revoke abortion rights is “catastrophic for women around the world.”

Macron expressed solidarity with women in the United States following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a nearly half a century old landmark ruling that will likely lead to abortion bans in roughly half the states.

Macron said women’s liberties are being undermined by the decision. “Abortion is a fundamental right for all women. It must be protected,” the French president wrote in a Twitter post late Friday.