France’s Macron pledges to make abortion a basic right in Europe

French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday said France would not rest until the right to abortion, now protected by the French constitution in a world first, was guaranteed in the EU rights charter and around the globe.
Macron spoke after hot wax was sealed to a constitutional amendment to formally inscribe the right to terminate a pregnancy.
The ceremony on International Woman’s Day came after parliament gave its final assent earlier this week.
“France today becomes the only country worldwide whose constitution explicitly protects the right to abortion in all circumstances,” Macron said in front of the justice ministry on the Place Vendome in central Paris.
But “we will not rest until this promise is kept everywhere in the world.”
Abortion has been legal in France since 1975, but Macron last year pledged to better protect it after the US Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the United States’ half-century-old right to the procedure, leaving it up to individual states to decide.
In a historic vote, a rare congress of both houses of France’s parliament on Monday gave a green light to make terminating a pregnancy a “guaranteed freedom” in the basic text, sparking celebration among feminists.
“Today is not the end of the story. It’s the start of a fight,” Macron said.
In Europe, “nothing is set in stone any longer and everything has to be defended,” he said, alluding to “reactionary forces” in other parts of the continent.
“This is why I wish for this guaranteed freedom to resort to an abortion to be inscribed in the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights,” he said.
The sealing ceremony — for the first time open to the public — came a year to the day after the president promised to constitutionalise the right.
Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti turned the handle of a 300-kilo (660-pound) 19th-century press to stamp a green wax seal on a ribbon attached to the official amendment document.
The sealing is purely ceremonial, and the amendment only comes into force once it’s published in the “Journal Officiel” of new laws.
Veteran pop singer Catherine Ringer performed a modified version of the national anthem, in which she addressed women “citizens” as well as men.
“Let us march, let us sing,” she sang.
“A pure law…
“In our constitution.”
The crowd included actor Catherine Deneuve, who in 1971 was among 343 women artists and intellectuals to sign a historic petition admitting they had had illegal abortions.
That manifesto helped pave the way towards the procedure becoming legal in 1975.
The constitutional change has been overwhelmingly backed by the French public, even if some conservatives remain against it, arguing it’s not a constitutional issue.
No country has ever so clearly safeguarded the right to a pregnancy termination in its basic text, said Leah Hoctor of the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Some countries allude to the right, while others explicitly mention it only in certain circumstances.
Neil Datta, of the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, said the French move “could serve as an example for progressives in all countries of Europe and beyond to define a course” towards improving abortion legislation.
National Assembly speaker Yael Braun-Pivet — the first woman in the post — read out the result of Monday’s historic vote, with 780 lawmakers in favour and 72 voting against.
More than 20 of her fellow women parliament speakers from around the world were also in Paris to attend the ceremony.
The last time the seal was used was in 2008, when lawmakers approved wide-sweeping amendments under former president Nicolas Sarkozy that limited a president’s time in office to two terms, as well as improved safeguards for press independence and freedom.
Despite the win for abortion, French feminists took to the streets across the country on Friday to insist there was still work to be done to ensure gender equality.
Activists say French women still bear the brunt of domestic labour, often work for less, and are too often killed for their gender.