France has become the first country in the world to enshrine the right to an abortion in its Constitution French lawmakers completed the historic vote less than an hour ago in Versailles and journalist Ross cin is in Versailles and joins me now live so Ross how did this
Unfold yeah Andrew the shatow deai just behind me in the last hour we have had that results a rare joint session of parliament is how it unfolded with MPS and senators coming together for a chance to have the final vote on whether they wanted to enshrine abortion rights into the French Constitution they’ve
Already had their votes in the lower house and the Upp house separately but they have to come together for a combined vote as the final parliamentary step and they did approve an overwhelming majority 780 votes in favor 72 against for this to pass they needed just over 500 votes so they cleared that
Easily because this policy has broad support from the far left through the center to the far right a lot of MPS and Senators overwhelmingly in favor of this The Next Step the last step will be for the president who by custom is not here not at a joint session at Parliament for
The president Emanuel macron to conduct the official signing ceremony which will be the first ever signing ceremony for a constitutional change to take place in public and it will happen on March the 8th which was not a random date it was chosen by Emanuel macron because that will be this year’s International
Women’s day and Ross abortion has been legal in France for nearly 50 years so why is this move taking place now yeah it is a historic move in terms of the international outcomes and international constitutions when we look at where abortion is legal where abortion is enshrined into the
Constitution France taking the lead on that for sure but it has been uh provided for by law since 1975 the spark for all of the this change though was two years ago when the US Supreme Court in 2022 overturned roow v Wade overturned the Constitutional a guarantee to access an abortion uh
Service in the United States when France saw that lawmakers from across the political Spectrum thought this is what something that we need to do here we need to take our protections for accessing uh pregnancy termination Services a step further they need to be into and enshrined in the Constitution
To protect those Provisions the have been protests here in verai today a lot of religious groups have been speaking out saying that it would be better to enshrine the rights of children and the rights of women into the Constitution rather than this accessing an abortion
But overall as I say across all sorts of different political parties there is this broad support for the measure which will be signed into law finally into the constitution on Friday Andrew Ross thank you that is journalist Ross Colin live at Versa France
France has enshrined the right to abortion in its constitution, a world first welcomed by women’s rights groups as historic and harshly criticized by anti-abortion groups. MPs and senators overwhelmingly backed the move in a special joint vote under the gilded ceilings of the Palace of Versailles.
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This is good news for human rights in France. Hopefully this is permanent.