France on Monday enshrined the right to abortion in its constitution, a world first welcomed by women’s rights groups as historic and harshly criticised by anti-abortion groups.
MPs and senators overwhelmingly backed the move, by 780 votes against 72, in a special joint vote of the two houses of parliament, under the gilded ceilings of Versailles Palace, just outside Paris.
Parliamentarians voted to revise the country’s 1958 constitution to enshrine women’s “guaranteed freedom” to abort. The vote saw a standing ovation in the parliament when the result was announced.
President Emmanuel Macron described the move as “French pride” that had sent a “universal message”.
And while several other countries include reproductive rights in their constitutions – France is the first to explicitly state that an abortion will be guaranteed.
It becomes the 25th amendment to modern France’s founding document, and the first since 2008.
Abortion rights activists gathered in central Paris cheered and applauded as the Eiffel Tower scintillated in the background and displayed the message “MyBodyMyChoice” as the result of the vote was announced on a giant screen.
“We’re sending a message to all women: your body belongs to you and no one can decide for you,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal told lawmakers ahead of the vote, Reuters reported.
Women have had a legal right to abortion in France since a 1974 law – which many harshly criticised at the time. But the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to reverse the Roe v. Wade ruling that recognised women’s constitutional right to abortion prompted activists to push France to become the first country to explicitly protect the right in its basic law.
Monday’s vote enshrined in Article 34 of the French constitution states that “the law determines the conditions in which a woman has the guaranteed freedom to have recourse to an abortion”.
“France is at the forefront,” said the head of the lower house of parliament, Yael Braun-Pivet, from French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party.