A French government plan to enshrine the "freedom" to have an abortion in the Constitution is to be tested Wednesday, February 28, in a crucial vote in the right-dominated Sénat.
President Emmanuel Macron last year pledged to inscribe the right to terminate a pregnancy – which has been legal in France since 1974 – in the Constitution after the US Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the half-century-old right to the procedure, allowing states to ban or curtail abortion.
France's lower-house Assemblée Nationale overwhelmingly voted in favor of making abortion a "guaranteed freedom" in late January, with almost all members of Macron's centrist minority coalition as well as left-wing opposition parties approving it.
But the plan still needs backing from the Sénat, which is controlled by the right, with several leading senators opposed to the change.
Only if the upper house approves the government's exact wording on Wednesday afternoon can a combined vote of both chambers of parliament be held next month towards changing the Constitution. Otherwise it will be sent back to the Assemblée Nationale for further debate.
'Guaranteed freedom'
The government chose the expression "guaranteed freedom" as an apparent compromise between both houses. The lower house in 2022 had approved enshrining the "right" to an abortion, while the Sénat last year was in favor of adding the "freedom" to resort to the procedure.
A Sénat committee on Wednesday morning rejected motions from the right to amend the text of the proposed revision, several members of parliament said, in a possible indicator the vote could be positive.
Even if Sénat leaders are against Macron's proposal, in private several right-wing senators have said they feel under pressure to approve it. "If I vote against it, my daughters will no longer come for Christmas," said one female senator who asked to remain anonymous.
More than three-quarters of right-wing Les Républicains in the Assemblée Nationale voted in favor of adding the freedom to the Constitution last month.
A survey by French polling company IFOP in November 2022 found 86% of French people were in favor of making having an abortion a constitutional right.