France wants to enshrine the right to abortion in the constitution. This was announced by President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday. In a speech in honor of women's rights activist Gisèle Halimi, who died in 2020, he said that "in the next few months" a corresponding bill should be introduced into parliament.

Michaela Wiegel

Political correspondent based in Paris.

  • Follow I follow

The call for constitutional protection for abortion law stems from the United States' Supreme Court ruling to the contrary last June. "I want to change the constitution in order to be able to abort women's freedom, to anchor it in it," Macron said. Nothing should make the right to abortion "reversible" or "reversed," he added in his speech at the Palace of Justice in Paris.

In 1971, the lawyer Halimi had co-signed the "Manifesto of the 343 Sluts", a feminist petition in favor of abortion, written by Simone de Beauvoir. In 1975, abortion was legalized in France, a significant step in the predominantly Catholic country.

In France, however, there are also doubts as to whether the right to abortion belongs in the constitution. The right-wing majority in the Senate has already spoken out against it. "The right to abortion is not threatened in France," said Senate Republican leader Bruno Retailleau. "The Constitution is not there to send symbolic messages all over the world," he said. The Green Senator Mélanie Vogel spoke of a "feminist progress".