France becomes world’s first country to make abortion a constitutional right

Abortion rights are more widely accepted in France than in the United States...

France on Monday enshrined the right to abortion in its constitution, becomes world first country to make abortion as a constitutional right.

MPs and senators overwhelmingly backed the move, by 780 votes against 72, in a special joint vote of the two houses of parliament, under the gilded ceilings of Versailles Palace, just outside Paris.

Abortion rights activists gathered in central Paris cheered and applauded as the Eiffel Tower scintillated in the background and displayed the message "MyBodyMyChoice" as the result of the vote was announced on a giant screen.

Abortion rights are more widely accepted in France than in the United States and many other countries, with polls showing around 80% of French people back the fact that abortion is legal.

But the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 decision to reverse the Roe v. Wade ruling that recognised women's constitutional right to abortion prompted activists to push France to become the first country to explicitly protect the right in its basic law.

"This right (to abortion) has retreated in the United States. And so nothing authorised us to think that France was exempt from this risk," said Laura Slimani, from the Fondation des Femmes rights group.

"There's a lot of emotion, as a feminist activist, also as a woman," Slimani said.

Monday's vote enshrined in Article 34 of the French constitution that "the law determines the conditions in which a woman has the guaranteed freedom to have recourse to an abortion".