Senators agreed on “the freedom of the woman to end her pregnancy”. If the deputies validate the formulation, the text may be subject to referendum. But all wish a government bill, which would avoid going to the polls.
by Mariama Darame and Solène Cordier
The Senate took an unprecedented step towards the inscription of the right to the voluntary pregnancy interruption (abortion) in the Constitution, Wednesday 1
This proposal was adopted through an amendment by senator Philippe Bas (Les Républicains, LR, Manche): “The law determines the conditions under which the freedom of the woman is exerted to end her pregnancy . “” There is no absolute right, there is an already recognized freedom and that we can write in the Constitution, justified Philippe Bas in reference to the Veil law of 1975 on abortion, but on condition that there is a conciliation between the rights of the pregnant woman to put an end to her pregnancy and the protection of the child to be born after a certain period. “
On the right, this lonely approach to amend this text aroused a form of incomprehension and even a fierce opposition of some of his colleagues, starting with the president of the LR group in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau. “I absolutely see no reason to modify the vote that we have already issued last fall, had warned the elected Vendéen in the meeting. The French Constitution of the V e Republic is not Made to send symbolic messages to the whole world. “In October 2022, the senatorial right had made the same subject fail a constitutional bill of the environmental senator Mélanie Vogel.
Once again, a double confrontation – legal and political – took place between opponents and supporters of the constitutionalization of abortion, sometimes within the senatorial majority, and this until the vote in extremis of the ‘M. Bas amendment, former collaborator of Simone Veil. “The registration of this amendment there will not change anything,” argued the president of the Law Commission, François-Noël Buffet (LR, Rhône). “Let us stop scareing us for things that do not exist today. Nothing is threatened and there is no point in bringing in fundamental law a freedom that has nothing to do with it,” added Senator Muriel Jourda (LR, Morbihan).
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