France’s Legal Amendment That Even the Pope Deplored

France becomes world’s first country to legalize abortion
President Macron to host celebration on March 8
Vatican and French Church dismayed by legalization news

In France, the Senate and the National Assembly held a joint session at the Palace of Versailles and passed a constitutional amendment specifying the freedom of abortion.

The amendment was passed with a landslide vote, with the number of votes in favor being more than ten times the number of votes against. The Speaker of the French National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, announced that France has become the world’s first country to legalize abortion, with 780 votes in favor and 72 votes against.

With the amendment, an abortion clause has been added to Article 34 of the French Constitution. The added clause states, “This establishes conditions under which women’s freedom to voluntarily terminate a pregnancy is guaranteed,” legally permitting French women to voluntarily terminate their pregnancies.

In France, abortion has been allowed since 1975, so the substantive changes are minimal. It was under the leadership of Simone Veil, a prominent French women’s rights activist and then Minister of Health, that abortion was permitted.

However, the fact that the “women’s right to decide on abortion” was explicitly stated in the constitution for the first time in the world has significant implications worldwide.

France’s Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said, “Today we have led a change in the course of history.”

He further stated, “It is our duty and mission to ensure that the spirit that is awakening now and the spirit that will awaken tomorrow are no longer captivated by this eerie memory,” explaining the significance of the legalization of abortion in France.

France had been allowing termination of pregnancy up to 12 weeks regardless of the reason. So how can they distinguish between embryos before 12 weeks and not?

In Korea, the Constitutional Court ruled that a blanket ban on abortion violates the principle of excessive prohibition and unduly infringes on a pregnant woman’s right to self-determination and decided the “Constitutional Nonconformity in Abortion” in April 2019. The Constitutional Court requested the National Assembly to introduce a replacement bill by December 31, 2020, but the abortion law is still in a blank state until 2024 due to the need for a major overhaul of related laws.

There is also a need for major efforts from the National Assembly since the crackdown on the abortion pill “Mifegyne” is strengthened when there is not even an agreement on how many weeks to legally apply as an “embryo.”

In the United States, there is a hot debate on whether frozen embryos in vitro fertilization should be considered “fetuses.” A ruling recognizing them as “fetuses” came out in Alabama last February. It is argued that frozen embryos are also fetuses and that they should bear legal responsibility for “death” if discarded.

This ruling served as a catalyst for reigniting the abortion rights debate in the recent U.S. presidential election.

When the U.S. Supreme Court abolished the 1973 ruling of Roe v. Wade that “allows abortion until 24 weeks of pregnancy” in 2022, there was a strong demand in France to define the abortion-related law as an “irrevocable constitutional right.”

Accordingly, France pushed for the constitutional right to abortion, but it once tasted the bitter experience of failure in the parliament. Eventually, the Macron government took the lead in amending the constitution directly, successfully specifying “the constitutional legality of abortion.”

French President Macron said, “This constitutional amendment is a pride of France and a message to the world.”

In addition, Macron announced that he would host a public celebration on March 8, “International Women’s Day,” in recognition of the day of constitutional amendment.

Recently, President Macron’s approval rating has fallen to 27%, and he has been in a difficult situation due to farmer protests across France and the issue of comments on Ukraine deployment. Political experts predicted that President Macron would present the constitutionalization of abortion rights as an “achievement” to recover his approval rating.

According to the French AP news agency, Marine Le Pen, a member of the far-right National Rally (RN), also voted in favor. When the amendment passed, female members of parliament cheered in unison, conveying the atmosphere of the Palace of Versailles.

It also reported that many Parisians watching this on a large screen in the Place de Trocadéro in Paris also cheered and celebrated.

Mathilde Philip-Gay, a French legal scholar, told the AP news agency, “In France, where most people support abortion, it may seem that there is no big problem with an abortion-related clause being specified in the constitution.” She explained the image of France that other countries might think of.

In addition, Mathilde Philip-Gay suggested that there is a significant implication for this constitutional specification, saying, “If not specified in the constitution, what happened in the United States (judgment of the frozen embryo as a fetus) could happen in France someday,” and further, “they could vote for the far-right party in the future.”

Meanwhile, Yaël Braun-Pivet, the Speaker of the National Assembly who hosted the joint session of both houses for the first time as a woman in France, emphasized the need for a constitutional amendment in her speech on the day, saying, “It only takes a moment for everything we decide and achieve to disappear,” and added her vote in favor of the abortion law.

Meanwhile, the Vatican was dismayed by the news of the constitutional specification of the right to abortion in France.

According to the U.S. Christian Post (CP), this amendment may have been popular among French legislators and citizens, but the Vatican and the Conference of France (CEF) criticized it.

The CEF recently stated in a statement, “Abortion remains an attack on life from the start,” and “It is not right to see it only from the perspective of women’s rights,” leaving a negative opinion on this amendment.

According to Vatican News, the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV) also supported the position of the Conference of France through a similar statement, saying, “In the age of universal human rights, there can be no ‘right’ for a human to take another human’s life.”