French President Emmanuel Macron wants to amend France’s constitution to enshrine the right to an abortion. If the revision is adopted, France will be the first country to explicitly designate access to abortion as a constitutional right.
At the end of October, Macron set the close of the calendar year as the deadline for making the change. “In 2024, the right of women to choose abortion will become irreversible,” he wrote on social media. This week, he took the first legal steps to make that happen by submitting an amendment draft to the Council of State, France’s highest administrative body and the “final arbiter of cases relating to executive power.”
Abortion is already legal in France—it was decriminalized in 1975—and abortion access remains overwhelmingly popular, with over 80% in favor, according to recent polling. The move to make it a constitutional right is the nation’s latest signal of its desire to solidify its standing as a country that supports abortion access at a time when nations such as the U.S. are rolling it back.
In February of 2022, France’s parliament voted to expand the legal window for abortion access from the 12th week of pregnancy to the 14th. When the U.S. Supreme Court decided to overturn Roe v. Wade in June of that year, Macron was one of the first world leaders to weigh in, calling abortion “a fundamental right for all women.”
Still, the road to constitutional revision in France isn’t easy, requiring either a public referendum vote or approval by three-fifths of both chambers of its parliamentary houses, the National Assembly and Senate. Macron is choosing the second, fast-tracked route.
By introducing a bill on behalf of the government—and bypassing the need for legislation to originate with lawmakers themselves—Macron will be able to convene a special congress for a vote at Versailles.
If Macron secures the three-fifths approval, Article 34 of France’s constitution would be amended to include language stating that “the law determines the conditions under which a woman’s freedom is exercised, which is guaranteed to her, to have recourse to an abortion.” According to reports, careful consideration went into the word choice of the draft, with “freedom of women” favored over “right of women” in order to pass the more conservative Senate.
Even so, adoption of the revision seems likely, and France’s minister for gender equality, diversity and equal opportunities, Bérangère Couillard, has begun celebrating already, calling the progress thus far “a victory for all women and a strong symbol sent to other countries of the world where our rights are losing ground.”
While France is likely to be the first country to adopt its own constitution in favor of signaling support for abortion access, it certainly isn’t alone in taking steps toward more liberal abortion laws. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, 60% of the 1.12 billion women of reproductive age now live where abortion is broadly legal. In July of 2022, the European Parliament adopted a resolution to declare the right to abortion a fundamental right. In Latin America, an energized “green wave” movement is expanding access in Mexico, Colombia and Argentina.
Only four countries have rolled back abortion access over the last decade: El Salvador, Nicaragua, Poland and the United States.
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