{"id":2748,"date":"2024-03-26T07:59:47","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T07:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/healthrights.mk\/?p=2748"},"modified":"2024-03-26T07:59:47","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T07:59:47","slug":"france-first-country-to-enshrine-abortion-in-the-constitution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healthrights.mk\/?p=2748","title":{"rendered":"France – First Country to Enshrine Abortion in the Constitution"},"content":{"rendered":"

USA State of Alabama Passes Law to Protect IVF Treatments:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alabama Passes Law to Protect I.V.F. Treatments – The New York Times (nytimes.com)<\/a><\/p>\n

France votes to enshrine abortion rights in constitution, a reaction to U.S. – The Washington Post<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Karla Adam<\/a><\/p>\n

March 4, 2024 – PARIS \u2014 With the endorsement of a specially convened session of lawmakers at the Palace of Versailles, France on Monday became the first country in the world to explicitly enshrine\u00a0abortion<\/a>\u00a0rights in its constitution \u2014 an effort galvanized by the rollback of protections in the United States.<\/p>\n

It passed by a vote of 780 in favor and 72 against, far above the required threshold of support from three-fifths of lawmakers, or 512 votes.<\/p>\n

French President Emmanuel Macron announced that a \u201csealing ceremony<\/a>,\u201d a tradition reserved for the most significant laws, would take place Friday, coinciding with International Women\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re sending a message to all women: Your body belongs to you, and no one can decide for you,\u201d Prime Minister Gabriel Attal told lawmakers assembled in Versailles.<\/p>\n

Thousands of Parisians gathered to watch the proceedings live on a giant television screen at Le Parvis des Droits de l\u2019Homme \u2014 or Human Rights Square \u2014 in central Paris, with the Eiffel Tower looming dramatically over the scene.<\/p>\n

When the amendment passed, the crowd erupted in celebration, and the tower lit up with twinkling lights. Mothers and daughters embraced. People cheered and waved French flags. The square immediately transformed into a massive street party, with revelers singing the lyrics from a Beyonc\u00e9 song, \u201cwho run the world, girls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laurence Beldowski, 53, turned to her daughter, Eugenie, 22, and hugged her tightly. A topless woman danced through the crowd with the words, \u201cBlessings, abortion is finally in the constitution,\u201d painted across her bare torso.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s incredible,\u201d Beldowski said. \u201cIt\u2019s a long fight for all generations, my mother, my grandmother, my daughter; it\u2019s for every woman. It\u2019s incredible to be the first country to protect this fundamental right of all women.\u201d<\/p>\n

France decriminalized abortion in 1975. Abortion is legal here for any reason through the 14th week of pregnancy; that\u2019s more restrictive than in nearly half of U.S. states, where abortion is protected well past 14 weeks. This amendment won\u2019t in itself loosen any laws.<\/p>\n

But while other countries have inferred abortion rights protections from their constitutions, as the U.S. Supreme Court did in\u00a0Roe v. Wade<\/em>, or implied it, as Slovenia does with a line about the freedom to choose to have children, France is the first to explicitly codify in its constitution that the voluntary termination of pregnancy is protected.<\/p>\n

\u201cMarch 4, 2024, is now engraved in the great history of human rights and women\u2019s rights as a historic turning point\u201a\u201d said Sen. M\u00e9lanie Vogel, one of the main backers of the bill.<\/p>\n

The outcome was \u201calso a promise for all women who fight all over the world for the right to have autonomy over their bodies \u2014 in Argentina, in the United States, in Andorra, in Italy, in Hungary, in Poland,\u201d said lawmaker Mathilde Panot, who had introduced the bill in the National Assembly. \u201cThis vote today tells them: Your struggle is ours; this victory is yours.\u201d<\/p>\n

A reaction to the United States<\/strong><\/p>\n

Activists and politicians have been transparent that this is, above all, a response to what has been happening in the United States since the Supreme Court overturned\u00a0Roe<\/em>\u00a0in 2022 and determined that the right to abortion has no constitutional stature \u2014 that it could no longer be inferred from constitutional privacy protections.<\/p>\n

France has moved in the opposite direction, with its politicians saying that abortion is indeed a matter of constitutional relevance. And more than that: The right to an abortion should be a \u201cguaranteed freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s interesting to see French politicians saying, \u2018We\u2019re going to take the constitution into our own hands and away from the courts, or at least limit how much discretion the courts are going to have in this area,\u2019\u201d said Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California at Davis and the author of \u201cRoe: The History of a National Obsession<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The overturning of\u00a0Roe<\/em>\u00a0was a \u201cmajor shock around the world,\u201d said Floriane Volt, a spokeswoman for the Fondation des Femmes (Women\u2019s Foundation), a women\u2019s rights organization that organized Monday\u2019s gathering.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn France, it helped us so that French politicians understood what we were saying to them for years and years. \u2026 We have to fight for abortion rights,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In many countries, abortion is protected by law, not court decision<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

She added that she hoped the success of the French campaign would strengthen other abortion rights movements.<\/p>\n

\u201cU.S. activists, don\u2019t give up the fight,\u201d said Lola Schulmann, an advocacy officer with Amnesty International in Paris\u00a0<\/strong>who was at Monday\u2019s gathering. \u201cWhat is happening in France is for you and all women fighting for abortion rights in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

What would it take to change the U.S. Constitution, too?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In both the United States and France, polls show that a\u00a0majority of people<\/a>\u00a0broadly support abortion rights. But abortion is more divisive in the United States than in France. The largest of the antiabortion protests Monday appeared to be a \u201cMarch for Life\u201d demonstration near Versailles involving several hundred people.<\/p>\n

That may be in part because France is proud of its commitment to secularism. It may also be because abortion in France has long been framed as a public health issue, rather than a privacy issue, said St\u00e9phanie Hennette-Vauchez, a professor of public law at the University of Paris-Nanterre.<\/p>\n

Changing the U.S. Constitution would be harder \u2014 it requires not only two-thirds majority support in both houses of Congress, but also ratification by at least\u00a038 of 50 state legislatures<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe obstacles are more significant,\u201d Ziegler said.<\/p>\n

She noted that one of the most \u201cnotorious examples\u201d of how hard it is to change the U.S. Constitution was the failure to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, which declared that sex discrimination was unconstitutional in the United States. \u201cI think most people would think that\u2019s less controversial than an abortion amendment would be,\u201d Ziegler said.<\/p>\n

Since the U.S. Constitution was ratified in the 1780s, it has been amended only 27 times, including the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments. \u201cThat sort of perspective gives you a sense of just how difficult it is\u201d to change it, said Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University. \u201cIt\u2019s even more difficult today to come up with a supermajority given the political divisions.\u201d By contrast, the current constitution of France, adopted in 1958, has been amended 24 times.<\/p>\n

State constitutions in the United States can be amended more easily than the U.S. Constitution. And so, \u201cfor people supporting women\u2019s rights, the strategy has been to go incrementally through the states, and hope to build eventually towards something nationally,\u201d Ziegler said.<\/p>\n

Since the end of\u00a0Roe<\/em>, six states \u2014 California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Vermont and Ohio \u2014 have\u00a0approved abortion-related constitutional amendments<\/a>. At least 13 additional states are trying to get abortion amendments on their ballots this year.<\/p>\n

The future of abortion rights in France<\/strong><\/p>\n

In France, nothing will change immediately as a result of the new constitutional amendment.<\/p>\n

The amendment does not change the status quo or the content of legislation as it stands today. For instance, it is not suddenly legal for any reason to terminate a pregnancy after the 15th week of pregnancy. The French National Assembly and the Senate would need to pass legislation if they wanted to make that kind of change.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s up to Parliament to regulate in this field,\u201d Hennette-Vauchez said. But, going forward, \u201cParliament cannot do exactly what they want. They need to legislate in a particular direction. And that direction is one that would preserve the idea of a guaranteed freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

It would now be more difficult for a new government to ban abortion at anything less than 15 weeks, or even to decide that abortion was no longer fully covered by the country\u2019s health insurance system.<\/p>\n

But Hennette-Vauchez noted that judicial interpretation is hard to predict. \u201cIn that sense, the word \u2018guarantee\u2019 is very important, but it\u2019s also relatively undefined.\u201d<\/p>\n

France\u2019s constitutional amendment doesn\u2019t safeguard abortion rights in France for eternity. Recognizing a right doesn\u2019t eliminate all of the questions about that right. There will still be judicial interpretation over what a \u201cguaranteed freedom\u201d means.<\/p>\n

And as lawmakers this year have shown, constitutions can be changed.<\/p>\n

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen dismissed the historic nature of Monday\u2019s vote, saying that it did not respond to any particular difficulties in France and was merely \u201ca day that [President] Emmanuel Macron organized for his own glory.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u0418\u0437\u0432\u043e\u0440: WUNRN \u2013 08.03.2024<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

USA State of Alabama Passes Law to Protect IVF Treatments: Alabama Passes Law to Protect I.V.F. Treatments – The New York Times (nytimes.com) France votes to enshrine abortion rights in constitution, a reaction to U.S. – The Washington Post By\u00a0Karla…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2749,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_series":[],"class_list":["post-2748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vesti","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthrights.mk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthrights.mk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthrights.mk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthrights.mk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthrights.mk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2748"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/healthrights.mk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2751,"href":"https:\/\/healthrights.mk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2748\/revisions\/2751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthrights.mk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthrights.mk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthrights.mk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthrights.mk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2748"},{"taxonomy":"post_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthrights.mk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fpost_series&post=2748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}