The road remains long before an inscription in the Constitution

At the beginning of November, the deputies gave a first green light to the inclusion of the right to abortion in the Constitution, but the initiative will not succeed if the Senate remains opposed to it. “No woman can be deprived of the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy”, the short text adopted in early November in the law commission, carried by the leader of the Renaissance deputies, Aurore Bergé, must now be examined in the hemicycle of the Assembly this week.

“It is neither for the symbol, nor by political opportunism, it is because it is up to us today to take this decisive step together”, had pleaded at the time the deputy, specially returned to the Assembly to defend his text, after giving birth at the end of October.

Lay down “a founding prerequisite”

Another text proposing to engrave this right to voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG) in the marble of the fundamental law, proposed by his counterpart from LFI Mathilde Panot, arrives in session before that, this Thursday, after a passage in committee. For LR, whatever the case may be, the text of the deputies “cannot succeed” even if it is adopted by the Assembly, given that the Senate, with a majority on the right, rejected on October 19 at first reading a similar bill, supported by the government. However, any proposal for a constitutional law must be voted on in the same terms by the two assemblies, before being submitted to a referendum.

The only way to avoid this final stage of a referendum would be for the initiative to revise the Constitution to come from the executive, the President of the Republic then being able to choose to submit the bill to the approval of the two assemblies. gathered in Congress for final adoption. The deputies must pose “a founding prerequisite”, insisted Aurore Bergé, believing that nothing would prevent, after adoption by the Assembly, that “another legislative path of recovery” opens up by the government.

“Finally, the presidential majority has woken up”

Remember that Aurore Bergé’s initiative, like that of LFI, was announced in June in the wake of a resounding decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which signed the end of abortion as a constitutional right. . Defenders of the inclusion of the right to abortion in the Constitution, in the presidential majority as well as on the left, point out that this achievement is also weakened in European countries. They cite recent restrictions in Poland and their concerns about countries like Hungary or even Italy.

In France, “associations testify to the presence of powerful movements, often coordinated at European level, which promote the abolition or restriction of the right to abortion”, noted Aurore Bergé, judging that “we should not wait for no longer being able to act to be sorry”.

– “Political wars” –

“Finally, the presidential majority has woken up,” quipped LFI MP Pascale Martin, recalling that the constitutionalization of the right to abortion had been “on the program for years” of the Insoumis. Elected LR and RN, on the other hand, displayed real reluctance in the face of the text. “The right to abortion is absolutely not threatened in France”, has already argued the deputy RN Pascale Bordes, criticizing a formulation which “suggests that access would be unconditional and absolute”.

MP LR Virginie Duby-Muller, for her part, deplored that the subject is “instrumentalized in the name of political squabbles” between the majority and the left, with the filing of competing texts. Above all, she asked that the constitutionalization of the right to abortion be accompanied by that of “respect for all human beings from the beginning of life, for the sake of balance”, an amendment rejected.

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