First modification:
The bill, drafted by an opposition politician, was supported by the majority. The regulation is perceived as one of the last social reforms adopted during the mandate of Emmanuel Macron.
After a final vote of the National Assembly with 135 votes in favor, 47 against and 9 abstentions, the French Parliament approved this Wednesday, February 23, the bill to extend the legal duration of abortion from 12 to 14 weeks.
The initiative, which had been presented by the deputy of the group Ecology, Democracy and Solidarity (EDS) Albane Galliot in October 2020, aims to improve the effectiveness of the right to abortion and be “faithful to the fight for the emancipation of women”, as assured the Minister of Health, Olivier Verán.
The parliamentarians definitely adopt the extension of the legal delay for the IVG from 12 to 14 weeks.
À l’heure où plusieurs pays remettent en question ce droit fundamental des femmes, je suis fier que la France le réaffirme et l’élargisse.— Olivier Veran (@olivierveran) February 23, 2022
In his speech, Gaillot defended that unrestricted abortion is already legal up to 14 weeks of gestation in countries like Spain and Austria, up to 18 in Sweden, up to 22 in the Netherlands and even up to 24 in the United Kingdom.
“These examples reflect that no medical or scientific argument justifies opposing the extension of the terms, that is why we must improve the effectiveness of the right to abortion,” said Véran.
According to an official report from the Directorate of Statistics, DREES, from September 2021, 222,000 voluntary abortions were performed in France in 2020, 4% less than in 2019, the year in which the highest figure was reached since the 1990s. in young people between 20 and 29 years old.
And to present more recent figures, the socialist deputy Marie-Noëlle Battistel assured that every year 2,000 women are forced to go abroad to have an abortion because their gestation stage has exceeded the legal term. “This project is for the most vulnerable women,” she said.
In its beginnings, the text also sought to suppress the “specific clause of conscience”, which allows doctors to refuse to perform an abortion, however, in order for the project to advance in Parliament, this proposal was withdrawn.
The law is presented as one of the last social reforms adopted during the mandate of Emmanuel Macron and was celebrated by several of the deputies, regardless of the support or rejection of the national government.
“The atypical course of this bill is a lesson to be learned about the functioning of our institutions. It shows that we must ignore political labels. When an idea is good, it is neither from the right nor from the left,” he told the AFP press agency Albane Gaillot, who will not stand for re-election in the next legislative elections.
Macron’s statements, in the middle of the previous debate
Opposition lawmakers told local media that the head of state’s “unequivocal” stance obstructed reform “for a long time” and recalled that Emmanuel Macron’s statements in an interview in July 2021 caused national polarization.
“Additional delays are not trauma-neutral to a woman, but I want to make it clear that I respect the freedom of parliamentarians,” Macron said. Some comments that cost the French president numerous criticisms by women’s rights activists.
In this way, the modification of the abortion law is shown as a victory for the government party La República en Marcha (LREM), to which the deputy Albane Gaillot belongs.
However, the bill has aroused the anger of anti-abortion activists and a part of the right in the Senate and the National Assembly, who have spoken repeatedly in the chambers and have attempted parliamentary obstruction.
And despite the fact that the candidates for the Presidency have been distant from the issue of abortion, local polls show that the majority of the French continue to be in favor of the right to interrupt pregnancy, something that is not yet a reality in some sectors of Eastern Europe. East.
With EFE and Reuters