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Agence France-Presse

The French parliament on Monday voted to anchor the right to abortion in the constitution, making France the first country in the world to offer explicit protection for terminating a pregnancy in its basic law.
A congress of both houses of parliament, gathered in a special chamber at the Palace of Versailles, easily found the three-fifths supermajority needed for the change, with 780 lawmakers in favour and 72 voting against.
Deputies applauded the change with cheers and a standing ovation.
President Emmanuel Macron described the move as “French pride” that had sent a “universal message”, and a special public ceremony is planned to celebrate the move in Paris on International Women’s Day on March 8.

The Eiffel Tower was lit up in celebration after the change was passed with slogans including “My Body My Choice” flashing on the edifice.
“This is a fundamental step … A step that will go down in history,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal told the lawmakers as he urged them to pass the legislation.
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He said they owed “a moral debt” toward all women who had suffered before the legalisation of abortion.
But Attal said the right to abort remained “in danger” worldwide, with our “freedoms in essence threatened … at the mercy of decision makers”.
“In one generation, one year, one week, you can go from one thing to the opposite,” he said, referring to rights reversals in the United States, Hungary and Poland.
Such joint parliamentary sessions are rare in France and called only for momentous occasions such as constitutional changes, the last of which was made in 2008.
Macron pledged last year to enshrine abortion – legal in France since 1975 – in the constitution after the US Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the half-century-old right to the procedure, allowing individual American states to ban or curtail it.
The vote “is of huge significance given the rollback of this essential right around the world,” said Amnesty International’s secretary general Agnes Callamard, adding that it had sent a message of “hope and solidarity”.

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in a post on X, welcomed “France’s decision to secure women’s rights and save their lives”.
In January, France’s lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, overwhelmingly approved the move with the upper house, the Senate, following suit on Wednesday.
A majority of the French public support the move to give the right to abortion extra protection, according to polls.
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A November 2022 survey by French polling group IFOP found that 86 per cent of French people supported inscribing it in the constitution.
Left-wing and centrist politicians have welcomed the change, while some right-wing senators have said in private they felt under pressure to give it a green light.
Several hundred abortion opponents, largely marginalised in the move for the constitutional change, protested in Versailles.

Catholic bishops meanwhile called for a day of “fasting and prayer” so the French could “rediscover the taste for life”.
Weighing in from Rome, the Vatican said there could be “no ‘right’ to take a human life”.
But hundreds of jubilant backers of the move leapt for joy at the Place du Trocadero in western Paris as they witnessed the passing of the law on a large screen set up for the occasion.
“I’m happy because our rights are constantly under threat everywhere … and it’s only getting worse,” said Cecile Carimalo, 46, who watched with her 12-year-old daughter at the Trocadero esplanade.
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“This they won’t be able to take from us.”
“If men got pregnant, it would have been inscribed in the text in 1792” during the French Revolution, she added.
Abortion was legalised in France in 1975 in a law championed by then-health minister Simone Veil, a women’s rights icon granted the rare honour of burial at the Pantheon after her death in 2018.
When political campaigning began in earnest in 1971, “we could never have imagined that the right to abortion would one day be written into the constitution”, Claudine Monteil, head of the Femmes Monde (Women in the World) association, said.
At the time, an estimated 700,000 to 800,000 women aborted each year.
Leah Hoctor, of the Centre for Reproductive Rights, said France could offer “the first explicit broad constitutional provision of its kind, not just in Europe, but also globally”.


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France

In world first, France makes abortion a constitutional right

The Eiffel Tower lights up with the message #MyBodyMyChoice after French lawmakers enshrined the right to abortion in its constitution. Photo: Reuters 

A congress of both houses of parliament gathered in a special chamber at the Palace of Versailles. Photo: AP

Constitutional Article 34 which guarantees the right of abortion. Photo: AP

Protesters in Versailles, southwest of Paris, during a demonstration against abortion and euthanasia. Photo: AFP

Macron vows to enshrine women’s rights to abortion in French Constitution from 2024

A rally on International Safe Abortion Day in Paris in September. Photo: AFP

Mexico’s Catholic activists help women reconcile their faith with abortion rights

A green scarf with a message that reads in Spanish: “To decide is sacred, just and necessary” adorns an altar to the Virgin Mary, in the office of the Catholics for the Right to Decide, in Mexico City. Photo: AP

Activist Cinthya Ramirez in the office of Catholics for the Right to Decide. The organisation was founded in 1994 by theologians and activists following in the footsteps of Catholics for Choice in the United States. Photo: AP

An activist holds a pamphlet titled “Sor Juana tells a story of a saint who was in favour of abortion” in Mexico City. Photo: AP

US Supreme Court to rule on abortion pill access, in first case since it overturned Roe vs Wade

The Supreme Court has agreed to take up a dispute over a medication used in the most common method of abortion in the United States. It’s the court’s first abortion case since it overturned Roe v. Wade last year. Photo: AP

Mifepristone and misoprostol pills are used for medication abortions. Pill-induced abortion is the most common method for terminating a pregnancy in the US Photo: TNS

Vietnam struggles with high abortion rates as consequence of gender selection: ‘people have to rely on their sons’

A pregnant woman walks with her young son in Hanoi. Vietnamese culture is still influenced by Confucianism and couples still tend to hope for sons. Photo: Shutterstock

Nguyen Thi Lua fixes artificial roses that have been placed on graves of unwanted fetuses at a cemetery in Nha Trang. Photo: AP

Nurses hold newborn babies at a hospital in Hanoi. According to Vietnam’s General Department of Population, it is estimated that Vietnam will have 1.5 million more males than females by 2034. Photo: AFP

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World

Europe

Historic move was approved in a 780-72 vote in the Palace of Versailles
Abortion enjoys wide support in France, and has been legal since 1975


President Emmanuel Macron described the move as ‘French pride’ that had sent a ‘universal message’.


In world first, France makes abortion a constitutional right

Historic move was approved in a 780-72 vote in the Palace of Versailles Abortion enjoys wide support in France, and has been legal since 1975

Historic move was approved in a 780-72 vote in the Palace of Versailles

Abortion enjoys wide support in France, and has been legal since 1975