France has become the first country in the world to include the right to abortion in its constitution.
Key points
- French Parliamentarians voted to revise the country’s 1958 constitution to enshrine women’s “guaranteed freedom” to abort.
- Abortion has been legal in France since 1975, but polls show around 85% of the public supported amending the constitution to protect the right to end a pregnancy.
- 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.
- The Bill amended the 17th paragraph of Article 34 of the French constitution.
- The constitutional change was prompted by recent developments in the US, where the right to abortion was removed by the Supreme Court in 2022 in Roe v. Wade case.
- In the lead-up to the historic vote, French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal paid tribute to Simone Veil, a prominent legislator and feminist who in 1975 championed the bill that decriminalised abortion in France.
- Abortion is currently accessible in more than 40 European nations, but some countries are seeing increased efforts to limit access to the procedure.
- Poland allows termination only in the event of rape, incest or a threat to the mother’s health or life.
- The United Kingdom permits abortion to 24 weeks of pregnancy, if it is approved by two doctors. Delayed abortions are allowed only if there exists a danger to the mother’s life.
- Italy resisted Vatican pressure and legalised abortion in 1978 by allowing women to terminate pregnancies up to 12 weeks or later if their health or life was endangered.
