France: As of next year, the right to abortion is guaranteed by the constitution

French President Emmanuel Macron wants to amend the French constitution to make "women's right to abortion irreversible" by next year.

This would make France the first country to explicitly designate access to abortion as a constitutional right, which is seen as a response to the repeal of the right to abortion in the United States last year, world media write.

A universal message of solidarity

At the end of October, Macron announced that his government plans to submit a draft law in the coming days, which will be presented to the Council of Ministers by the end of the year, and which would incorporate abortion rights into the country's constitution.

Advocacy for giving constitutional status to abortion is, as Politico points out, a continuation of what Macron promised on March 8, on the occasion of International Women's Day.

Macron said France's initiative should be seen as a "universal message of solidarity towards women whose abortion rights have been violated".

As the Brussels portal points out, this is a direct reference to the reversal of Roe v. Wade by the US Supreme Court last year.

Revision of the constitution in France requires either a referendum or the approval of at least three-fifths of the members of both houses of parliament united in Congress, wrote Le Monde.

Termination of pregnancy was decriminalized in France in 1975, and successive laws since then aim to improve conditions for abortions, particularly by protecting women's health and anonymity, as well as reducing the financial burden of the procedure on women.

A November 2022 public opinion poll found that 89 percent of respondents support the proposal to declare abortion rights constitutional. According to government data, adds Le Monde, 234.000 abortions were performed in France last year.

"Real women are losing ground." "feet"

Macron's pledge to enshrine a woman's right to an abortion in the French constitution comes after restrictions in other countries set France on the path to unconditionally guaranteeing the right to terminate a pregnancy, he wrote The Guardian.

The draft text, the British newspaper added, was supported by a large majority in the national assembly last November before being passed by the Senate in February, despite opposition from right-wing parties, who argued that French abortion rights were not threatened.

Several political parties, from the left to the centrist, have begun pushing for abortion rights to be written into the constitution following the US Supreme Court's June 2022 decision to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.

Awaiting the end of the process, the French Minister for Gender Equality, Beranger Colliard, calls the progress so far "a victory for all women and a strong symbol sent to other countries of the world where our rights are losing ground." 

Poland has some of the strictest abortion laws in Europe, The Guardian points out, adding that the laws there allow termination of pregnancy only in the case of rape, incest or a threat to the health or life of the mother. Restrictions were further tightened in 2020 when the Constitutional Court of Poland ruled that co-abortions based on fetal defects were unconstitutional.

Right camouflaged into freedom

The path to the revision of the constitution in France is not easy and requires either a statement in a public referendum or the approval of three fifths of both houses of parliament, that is, the National Assembly and the Senate. Macron chose another, faster route, he writes Forbes.

By introducing legislation on behalf of the government and bypassing the need for legislation to come from lawmakers themselves, Macron will be able to convene a special congress for a vote in Versailles.

Once approved, Article 34 of the French constitution would be amended to include wording stating that "the law determines the conditions under which the freedom of a woman, which is guaranteed to her, to have an abortion is realized."

According to reports, as Forbes points out, careful consideration was given to the wording of the bill, with "women's freedom" favored over "women's rights" to get the bill passed by the more conservative Senate.

Although France is likely to be the first country to adopt its own constitution in favor of signaling support for access to abortion, it is certainly not alone in taking steps toward more liberal abortion laws, the American magazine points out.

According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, 60 percent of the 1,12 billion women of reproductive age now live where abortion is mostly legal.

In July 2022, the European Parliament adopted a resolution declaring the right to abortion a fundamental right, Forbes wrote, adding that only four countries have abolished the right to abortion in the past decade: El Salvador, Nicaragua, Poland and the United States.

Changes possible, but not quickly

Although abortion is legal in France up to the 14th week of pregnancy and is fully covered by the country's health insurance system, French women have sought to further protect their rights, especially after restrictions on that right in the United States, he wrote. The Washington Post.

The US Supreme Court ruling was "very shocking in France," said Mathilde Philip-Gay, a law professor at the University of Jean-Moulin Lyon.

"Immediately after this case, a movement was born, and women asked the parliament to act, and especially to change the constitution." She noted that current actions are necessary for the sake of the future.

Stephanie Henette Vauchez, a law professor at the University of Paris Nanterre, said there are other countries whose constitutions talk about reproductive autonomy or the right to make decisions about children, "but there is no constitution that really explicitly protects the right to abortion."

"It also opens up really interesting theoretical questions about why constitutions are so silent on human reproduction when, you know, all political communities are existentially dependent on reproduction," she said. "If France or any other country were to enshrine the right to abortion in the constitution, it would be a truly pioneering move."

And while it is difficult to change the constitution in France, it is even more difficult in the United States, where three-quarters of the states need to agree on any amendment, the Washington paper points out, adding that abortion rights activists in the US are currently fighting bans and other steps to limit it. approaches in different countries.

"We are certainly very far from a constitutional amendment that guarantees a woman's right to choose an abortion. In fact, America is moving in a different direction," said Adam Winkler, a UCLA professor specializing in American constitutional law, noting that it is still possible to change that - with time.

What does the law on abortion in Serbia say?

Data from the Institute for Public Health of Serbia "Dr. Milan Jovanović Batut" show that the number of abortions in Serbia is decreasing. 

In 2021, based on birth registrations, 59.854 births with a total of 60.970 children were registered in Serbia, of which 325 were stillborn.

In the same year, 10.880 abortions were reported.

Namely, there were more abortions in Serbia in 2020 than in 2021 - 11.584 were reported. In 2019, there were even more - 13.901 pregnancy terminations. In that year, the most abortions occurred among women who had two children.

In 2018, 14.079 pregnancies were terminated, and in 2017 – 14.356.

Just a decade ago, in 2020, 22.092 pregnancy terminations were officially reported in Serbia. What is interesting, even then, the most breaks were between the ages of 25 and 34 and among women who already have two children.

According to the Law on Termination of Pregnancy Procedures in Healthcare Institutions in Serbia, women over 16 years of age can request termination of pregnancy in the first ten weeks, while in the later period it is decided by the council of doctors and the ethics committee. 

However, as the BBC writes, the Constitution from 2006 is not precise, because it is prescribed that everyone decides on childbirth, therefore, it is not the woman, but everyone, and in the constitutional terminology, everyone means literally everyone. 

In Serbia, two types of abortion are available - non-surgical and surgical.

Non-surgical abortion is performed by taking two drugs, and in this way it can be done up to the seventh week of pregnancy at the "Narodni Front" Gynecology and Obstetrics Clinic.

This type of abortion is less risky than a surgical one because the patients do not receive anesthesia and there is no surgical intervention, but it is not painless.

In order to use the pill, the hospital must obtain permission from the Ministry of Health.

Surgical abortion is performed under total or local anesthesia.

ZS/RSE/BBC

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