News Center- On Monday, French lawmakers approved a bill that will enshrine the right to an abortion in the Constitution of France in a joint session of Parliament at the Palace of Versailles. The bill was approved in an overwhelming 780-72 vote.  Thus, France becomes the first country in the world to make abortion a constitutional right.

Left-wing and centrist politicians have welcomed the decision, while right-wing senators in private have said they felt under pressure to give it a green light. One said her daughters would "no longer come for Christmas" if she opposed the move.

Statement by Emmanuel Macron

After the vote, Emmanuel Macron announced that the amendment would be inscribed in the constitution on Friday, March 8, International Women's Day, during a ceremony in central Paris that will be open to the public.

‘We could never have imagined’

When political campaigning began in earnest in 1971, “we could never have imagined that the right to abortion would one day be written into the constitution,” Claudine Monteil, head of the Femmes Monde (Women in the World) association, told AFP. Leah Hoctor, of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said France could offer the first explicit broad constitutional provision of its kind, not just in Europe, but also globally.

A November 2022 survey by French polling group IFOP found that 86 percent of French people supported abortion to be guaranteed in the constitution.

President Emmanuel Macron pledged last year to enshrine abortion in the constitution after the US Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the half-century-old right to the procedure, allowing states to ban or curtail it.