United States—French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that membership in the European Union entails adding abortion rights to the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights.
Historic Moment
The minister for justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, employed historic print presses of the past during a ceremony and used them to seal the right to abortion into the French constitution after deputies who gave the most votes all in favor on Monday, as reported by Reuters.
“Today is not the end of the story but the start of a fight,” Macron told the ceremony, which coincided with International Women’s Day.
“We’re going to lead this fight on our continent, in our Europe, where reactionary forces are attacking women’s rights before attacking the rights of minorities,” he told the crowd attending the ceremony in Paris in front of the Justice Ministry.
“This is why I want to enshrine that guaranteed freedom to abortion in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.”
Changing the EU Charter Faces Challenges
Changing the EU charter, the unanimous decision included, definitely could be complicated. Though the prohibition of abortions is legal in most parts of Europe, in some countries, women have restrictions for terminating a pregnancy, and this sort of division still happens among abortion rights enthusiasts.
Last year, the government of EU Member State Malta failed to push a bill that would allow abortion in cases where the mother’s health is at risk, even if the risk is a serious one. In the end, only terminations where the life of the mother will be lost would be allowed.
With Malta, Poland also has some of the enlarged and most restrictive anti-abortion laws in Europe. Abortion is permitted if a mother’s life or health is threatened or through sexual assault, and the number of abortions has dropped from 1,000 to 161 in the last two years, as reported by Reuters.
New Article 34
On Monday, the two houses of the French parliament came to their final decision and approved the new Article 34 of the constitution, which is: “the law determines the conditions in which a woman can access an abortion.”
France is more liberal on the issue of abortion than most countries or the US, according to the data from the surveys, where up to 80% of the French population supports the point that abortion should be legal.