Including Abortion in the Constitution: Reform Introduced in Senate, Right Convinced?

A step forward or a sharp brake? After a very broad adoption of the government draft in the National Assembly, senators will give the first signal of their intentions during the consideration of the text by the Legislative Commission.

Will they vote to constitutionalize the “guaranteed freedom” of voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion), as the executive hopes? Will they abandon this main promise of Emmanuel Macron? Or will they choose a third way – a new formulation of constitutional law, which will then force MPs to take another look at the topic?

The only certainty is that uncertainty will remain until the constitutional amendment is considered in open session on February 28. And there is no guarantee that the Senate, dominated by a demanding alliance of right and center, will approve the reform to the decimal point.

Only concordant passage by the Senate will pave the way for a Congress that unites all parliamentarians. It will then be necessary to secure a three-fifths majority to give final approval to this constitutional reform.

Congress on March 5 is uncertain

So the Congress date of 5 March, set by the Executive for late 2023, looks very uncertain at this stage and the government is careful not to put it back on the negotiating table.

“I’m in no hurry,” Justice Minister Eric Dupont-Moretti confirmed Tuesday, as if persuading senators. “Parliament has to do its job and we will take the time to do it. »

The Minister of Justice, who knows that he has the support of all the left and the majority, still took care to challenge the right: “Isn’t it time to sanctify this freedom all together? It would look great. »

But powerful Senate President Gerard Larcher has caused trouble in recent days by loudly recalling his opposition to the government project. The IVG is “not under threat” in France and the Constitution “is not a catalog of social and public rights”, he said, drawing the ire of women’s rights associations.

While many on the right share his analysis, the upper house patriarch’s position does not appear to constitute a majority among either the 348 senators in the chamber or the 49 members of the Judiciary Commission.

Indeed, in February 2023, the Senate already approved a text enshrining in the Constitution the “freedom” of women to “terminate a pregnancy.” But the concept of “guarantee” did not appear there.

“With time, this will pass,” admits Hervé Marcel himself, the leader of the centrists. As usual, he will give his troops “complete freedom” in this project, although he is personally against it.

LR struggles to agree

The same freedom is in LR, where leader Bruno Retaillo – also hostile – will not impose “any political line” on his members “on this issue that affects the personal conscience of every person,” he explained to AFP. Before insisting: “The Government cannot impose a timetable on us while ignoring parliamentary debate. »

In a sign of the right’s difficulty in taking a collective position on the issue, several sources within the LR group have confirmed that no amendment will be brought before the commission, with the right preferring to delay its possible proposals until February 28.

“We clearly see that there is an evolution in the group,” admits Agnès Canayer, appointed rapporteur of the LR group. “I’m still not in favor, but I won’t vote against it either,” she even drops, advocating nevertheless for the version already adopted in the Senate, “clear, clear and transparent” wording.

On the other side of the half-cycle, the left has no intention of letting up the pressure to change the undecided: “The stakes of this vote go far beyond the current political context and our divisions,” insists environmentalist Melanie Vogel to her colleague on the right and center.