French Senate Okays Women’s Right to Abortion

France’s upper house of parliament, the senate, has voted overwhelmingly to enshrine women’s right to abortion in the constitution.

The proposal, approved earlier by the lower house, the national assembly, was backed by 267 votes to 50 on Wednesday.

Abortion has been legal in France since 1974 but pressure has grown to further cement it in law.

French President Emmanuel Macron has called a special, repeat vote on Monday involving both houses meeting together away from Paris in the suburb of Versailles.

If the joint session approves the constitutional amendment with a majority of at least three-fifths, there will be no need to put it to a referendum.

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Posting on X, Mr. Macron said he was committed to making women’s freedom to resort to termination irreversible by inscribing it in the constitution.

France’s time limit on elective abortion is set at 14 weeks – a shorter timeframe than the proposed 15-week nationwide ban that has caused such uproar in the United States.

Yet abortion care is reimbursed in full by France’s social security system.

French law allows medical abortion within the first nine weeks of pregnancy (increased from seven during the Covid pandemic).

Medical abortion – brought on by taking a pill – accounts for at least 90% of abortions taking place before 13 weeks of pregnancy and at least half of abortions overall in Europe, according to a 2018 study by the British Medical Journal.

More than half of all US abortions are also performed via medication, according to the Guttmacher Institute for reproductive health policy.