IVG in the Constitution: text presented on 13 December to the Council of Ministers before the Congress in March

The bill, which would include voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion) in the Constitution, will be presented to the Council of Ministers on December 13 ahead of a possible meeting of Congress in March to ratify its passage, several invited party leaders said on Friday. Macron.

This text is due to be considered by Parliament in the first quarter of 2024. It would then be necessary for 3/5 of the deputies and senators assembled during Congress to approve language that would make abortion an “irreversible” right. according to the promise of Emmanuel Macron. The last Congress to revise the constitution was held in 2008 to modernize institutions.

Protecting this right

On March 8, International Women’s Rights Day, the President of the Republic committed himself to include in the Constitution the freedom to have abortion, responding to concerns raised by the repeal a year and a half ago of regulations guaranteeing the United States. the right to abortion throughout the country. Including abortion in the Constitution, a right currently recognized in ordinary law, would complicate any legislative attempt to suppress or seriously undermine that right.

At the request of leftist and feminist groups, the inclusion of this right was raised in March by Emmanuel Macron, who spoke about revising the Constitution. LFI MP Matilda Pano proposed a constitutional law, passed in first reading in the Assembly last November, guaranteeing “the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy.” The Senate, in turn, passed it in February, but included in it “the freedom of women” to resort to voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion), rather than their “right.”

The number of abortions is at its highest level since 1990. There were 234,300 voluntary terminations of pregnancy (VT) in France in 2022, 17,000 more than in 2021, according to a study by the Department of Research, Research, Evaluation and Statistics. (Dres) published at the end of September.