PARIS (LifeSiteNews) — France’s Senate voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to embed women’s so-called “liberty to have an abortion” in the French constitution. Out of 339 senators, 317 voted for the article amending the constitution in the same terms as did the National Assembly earlier this month, thereby opening the way to the law’s definitive adoption scheduled for Monday, March 4, which will require a majority of 3/5ths of the Senate and National Assembly in a solemn vote during a joint session in the Palace of Versailles. Sadly, it seems highly likely – given the more than comfortable majorities obtained in both chambers for this constitutional “license to kill” – that France will then become the first nation to protect abortion in its fundamental law.
A scant 22 abstained, while 50 senators voted against the inscription of the “guaranteed freedom” for women to “have recourse to a voluntary interruption of pregnancy,” the French legal euphemism for abortion. These did not include the three senators of the so-called right-wing Rassemblement national (RN), formerly Marine Le Pen’s National Front, who not only all voted for the embedding of abortion in the constitution, but who in the debate preceding the vote joined the widespread vote rejecting an amendment aimed at changing the wording of the text in order to guarantee “health professionals’” right not to be “bound to perform” abortions or to “contribute” to the act of committing them.
Stéphane Ravier, a former member of the RN who now belongs to former presidential candidate Eric Zemmour’s “Reconquête” party was among the 50 senators who voted against, but similarly to all of these, did not say a word against abortion as such. The opponents simply remarked that abortion, “IVG,” as it is called, “is not under threat” and that it is therefore unnecessary to give it constitutional protection.
Indeed, not a single political party represented in the National Assembly or in the Senate in France is willing to voice open hostility to the legal killing of unborn babies. Whether the reasons the 50 senators gave for voting against the bill were sincere or not, they are a sign of the absolute submission of the “official” parties to what has become a full-blown “taboo” in France: registering straight opposition to legal abortion is tantamount to a death sentence regarding access to the political life and institutions of the country.
The only thing obtained by these puny opponents was a change in the bill’s wording, which was initially approved by the National Assembly in 2022 with the term “right” to abortion. Last year, the Senate substituted this with the word “freedom” to abort, and this was later replaced by the words “guaranteed freedom” by the government, which was accepted by both chambers. French law historian and political commentator Guillaume Bernard called this “political hypocrisy,” telling the Catholic monthly Monde & Vie:
The Senate amended the text in order to mention freedom of recourse to abortion, so that it is the person who wishes to have an abortion who has access to it, without being able to claim a right that can be opposed to doctors or society. But this is hypocritical, because the whole evolution of doctrine and jurisprudence at European level shows that we have always moved from a right to freedom to what we call a right to claim. This is the case law of the ECHR on euthanasia and assisted suicide. And that’s what’s likely to happen with the constitutionalization of abortion, i.e. the freedom to have an abortion will lead to a claimable right, enforceable against doctors in particular. The freedom of conscience of the medical profession is therefore objectively at risk. By replacing the word “right” with “freedom”, the claim has supposedly been watered down, but the result is a small step backwards in order to make a bigger leap forward. Constitutionalization further legitimizes abortion, raising it to the level of a constitutional principle and a republican value. Opposing it is therefore likely to become more complicated, because it would mean challenging the sacrosanct “rule of law.”
France registered a record number of abortions in 2023: no less than 234,300, an increase of over 17,000 compared to 2022. Last year also saw a record low in births since 1945: only 678,000 babies were born, 48,000 less than in 2022. In January, these catastrophic statistics led president Emmanuel Macron to call for “demographic rearmament.” But it was he who touted the constitutionalization of abortion shortly after the reversal of Roe v. Wade in the U.S. in June 2022, which he considered a threat to abortion “rights.”
Moments after the Senate adopted the law, a statement issued by the French presidency said that Macron would summon both chambers to Versailles for the final joint vote. Macron himself posted the following message on X: “I pledged to make women’s freedom to have an abortion irreversible by enshrining it in the Constitution. After the National Assembly, the Senate has taken a decisive step, one that I welcome. For the final vote, I will convene Parliament in Congress on March 4.”
The date was chosen because it is close to “International Women’s Day.” The debates in the Senate and National Assembly took place on a very tight schedule and were treated as a political emergency in order to make this possible.
There was some speculation in the media that the Senate would amend the bill, which would have forced the debate to continue at the National Assembly, but as said earlier, this did not happen. Apparently the powers that be did not think this was a possibility: in Versailles (where I live) parking and driving restrictions around the palace were already set up for March 3 and 7 on Wednesday morning, hours before the Senate’s session on the bill scheduled on Wednesday evening.
Shortly after the vote, the former archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit, posted the following message on X: “Abortion in the Constitution. Health carers’ conscientious objection was rejected. The law imposes itself on the conscience, forcing to kill. France has hit rock bottom. It has become a totalitarian state.”
The French Bishops’ Conference issued the following statement: “The French Bishops’ Conference (CEF) was saddened to learn of the Senate’s vote on the constitutional amendment guaranteeing freedom of access to abortion. Thinking of those who are considering abortion, particularly women in distress, the CEF reiterates that abortion, which remains an attack on life in its beginning, cannot be seen solely from the angle of women’s rights. It regrets that the debate did not address the issue of support for those who wish to keep their child.”
A silent demonstration organized by the Manif pour tous took place on Wednesday evening during the Senate debate. The organization La France prie (France prays) has called for the public prayers that take place every Wednesday in over 2,000 locations in France to be held in these tragic circumstances with renewed vigor and increased participation.
What will the constitutionalization of abortion change? Abortions will continue to take place, probably much as before. But as Guillaume Bernard remarked, health workers are now facing a very real threat to their freedom not to contribute to the killing of unborn babies. And with abortion becoming a “republican value,” questions now arise regarding pro-life organizations and their right to public expression, as well as the teaching of respect for life in Catholic education. At any rate, the move is mainly a message: from now on, it seems to proclaim, fighting abortion is useless and “not republican.”
A foretaste of this came last week when a “conservative” TV station, CNews, was attacked for having quoted abortion as a “cause of mortality.” It was during a religious program, En quête d’esprit, presented together with the Catholic weekly France catholique that its presenter, Aymeric Pourbaix, quoted Worldometer statistics calling abortion “the first cause of mortality in the world,” with “73 million abortions in 2022, or 52 percent of all deaths.” Ten million die of cancer, by comparison, and 6.2 million from tobacco-related disease, he added.
This sparked outrage in particular from “Sleeping Giants” that blacklist the media they do not like, under the slogan: “Abortion is a fundamental right, not a ‘cause of mortality.’” The French audiovisual watchdog ARCOM responsible for attributing TV channel frequencies received multiple formal claims from public and less public figures asking it to ban CNews.
READ: Abortion killed 44.6 million people worldwide in 2023, more than any other cause of death
The station itself caved in to the protests, with its anchors making several on-screen statements “regretting” the “incident,” “begging pardon,” and “presenting its excuses for this mistake that should never have taken place.” One presenter, Laurence Ferrari, added that she was personally in favor of making abortion a “constitutional right.” Two other journalists who are often presented as favorable to the right and interested in spirituality and Catholicism, Sonia Mabrouk and Christine Kelly, presented similar apologies. The station’s financer, billionaire Vincent Bolloré, a Catholic convert, also offered his “excuses” on X “to all those who may have been offended” by the sequence, adding that it “had been deleted during final editing and should therefore never have been broadcast.”
This is bad enough, but from now, save a divine intervention, things can only get worse.