French president Emmanuel Macron has announced that he will bring forward a law to make abortion a constitutional right following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States.
The right for a woman to abort a baby in France will soon be enshrined in the constitution, the country’s President, Emmanuel Macron, announced on Wednesday.
It is the latest chapter in France’s recent obsession with the issue of abortion, with leftist activists in the country pushing for the right to kill children in utero to be added to the country’s constitution ever since the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade last year.
According to a report by Le Figaro, Macron is now acting on these leftist demands, saying that he intends to bring forward a bill which will see abortion become a constitutional right in the country.
The head of state justified the move during a speech marking International Women’s Day, saying that he wants to make sure the right of a woman to abort her baby in France is “irreversible” — seemingly in reference to the idea that a conservative government in the country could restrict terminations in future.
Macron went on to say that plans to enshrine abortion in the constitution will be unveiled in the coming months, much to the delight of a number of high-profile progressive activists in the country.
“It’s a big step towards securing the right to abortion in France and an exemplary step forward for the rest of the world,” feminist journalist and activist Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette said in response to the declaration.
Women have had the right to an abortion in France since the 1970s, with the country only now becoming obsessed with the issue yet again after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the infamous Roe v. Wade ruling preventing individual states from banning abortion within their territory if they so choose.
The new ruling prompted mass condemnation in the European Union, with Macron describing abortion as a “fundamental right for all women” and accusing the American court of undermining the “liberties” of U.S. citizens.
The Roe reversal also ended up spurring French politicians into strengthening abortion access in their own country, despite the fact that — according to many of the European nation’s right-wingers — no one is actually looking to make the practice illegal anytime soon.
Indeed, some on the country’s right have argued that Macron and his government are just using the issue as a way of distracting the public from the issues of energy, inflation, and mass migration.
“The reality is that [the government] is carrying out a political diversion because it does not want the focus to be on the main concerns of the French people today and their difficulties,” France’s main opposition figure, Marine Le Pen, said last year regarding the issue.
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