The text will probably be rejected, but the debate is open. The Senate will discuss, Wednesday in the hemicycle, a cross-partisan bill to include the right to abortion in the Constitution. It will serve as a prelude to the debate promised by the presidential majority in the National Assembly. The text will be debated at first reading in the context of a space reserved (“parliamentary niche”) for the environmental group.
It was co-signed by senators from seven of the eight political groups in the Senate, with the exception of the first of them, Les Républicains, underlined its author Mélanie Vogel (ecologist). “It’s only a question of protecting an achievement,” she said at a press conference on Tuesday. “In the world, no fundamental law protects the right of women to have an abortion,” noted Xavier Iacovelli, vice-president of the Renaissance-majority RDPI group. By constitutionalizing the right to abortion, our country would be at the forefront”.
Bills in the Assembly
Two similar constitutional bills are in the pipeline in the National Assembly, on the initiative of the left-wing alliance Nupes and the presidential majority group Renaissance. At the Palais Bourbon, the macronists want to carry their text on November 9 in the law commission and the week of November 28 in the hemicycle. “Amending our Constitution” is a “difficult process, but it is a fierce will” so that “the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy cannot be called into question”, underlined Tuesday the leader of the group, Aurore Bergé.
Senator PS Laurence Rossignol called for her part on the government to present a text itself. “It’s good to support our bill (…), but the government, like us, we know that the procedure of parliamentary initiative will not go to the end, she declared. It is too complicated, too demanding. »
First setbacks
In the Senate, the constitutional bill brought by Mélanie Vogel suffered a first setback in committee. While claiming to be “committed to the protection of abortion”, the law commission considered that “a constitutional revision is not necessary[ait] not “. The group presidents of the senatorial majority, Bruno Retailleau (LR) and Hervé Marseille (centrist) are on the same line.
According to the law commission, the inclusion of a constitutional right to abortion and contraception “is not justified by the situation encountered in our country. It imports a debate linked to the constitutional organization specific to the United States, which is very different from that of France”. The law commission still judged the approach “purely proclamatory and symbolic”.
An argument that exasperates Mélanie Vogel: “We cannot consider that it is the same thing to live in a country where a law that would, for example, reduce access times, de-reimburse, add conditions to abortion, or unconstitutional or it is not. It’s not symbolic. » « The right to abortion is never questioned as a whole. The attacks on the right to abortion are always progressive, in small bits, we reduce the deadlines, we defund the centers, we add conditions…”, she underlined.
Power of veto
The text will find support on the benches of the senatorial majority, within the centrist group, the freedom to vote being put on societal texts. In addition to the signatories – Brigitte Devésa or Daphné Ract-Madoux -, the president of the delegation for Women’s Rights, Annick Billon, will vote for it to defend “a major right that French women have acquired the hard way”. Likewise the social security budget rapporteur, Elisabeth Doineau.
But, notes Laurence Rossignol, “since the Veil law, changes in the right to abortion have always been made without the senatorial right”. However, when it comes to a modification of the Constitution, the Senate has a sort of right of veto. The government paid the price last year with the bill aimed at integrating the preservation of the environment into Article 1 of the Constitution. Eventually abandoned.