There seemed to be relatively consensus on the constitutionalization of abortion. Alas, this Tuesday, Gérard Larcher, the president of the Senate, seriously reduced the hopes of easily reaching an agreement between the majority and the oppositions in the two chambers of Parliament and on a vote in Congress in Versailles, in March, as ‘hoped Emmanuel Macron.
“I don’t think that abortion is threatened in France,” explained Gérard Larcher on France Info, for whom “the Constitution is not a catalog of social and societal rights.”
Deadlines too short
According to his entourage, the President of the Senate did not at all appreciate the delays envisaged by the executive concerning this constitutional bill which requires bringing together three-fifths of Congress – deputies and senators combined – to be adopted. The Assembly examines the text this Wednesday, which should then go immediately to the Senate.
At LR, it escaped no one’s notice that this vote would take place while the European elections next June are looming and the bill divides within it.
“With such short deadlines, the government immediately assumes that the Senate will align itself with the drafting of the National Assembly,” points out Gérard Larcher’s entourage. What displeases the Luxembourg Palace.
“Gérard Larcher’s position has not changed one iota,” defends Bruno Retailleau, the leader of the LR senators, also opposed to constitutionalization on the grounds that the law already guarantees the fundamental freedom of women to resort to to abortion. “My own opposition has perhaps eclipsed that of Gérard Larcher,” underlines the senator from Vendée, renowned for his conservatism on a societal level.
At the end of the debate, let’s avoid finding ourselves in the anti-abortion camp.
Eric Ciotti President of LR
This Tuesday morning, during the group meeting of deputies, President LR Eric Ciotti expressed his doubts about the attitude of the senators of his party, while freedom of voting exists in LR on societal subjects: “ I warn that we must not fall into Macron’s trap, we have made significant progress in our history for women’s freedom, let us avoid at the end of the debate finding ourselves in the camp of the anti-old-fashioned IVG. Politics is unfortunately quite binary, you can have the best legal argument in the world, but that is not what people remember,” he recalled.
Parliamentary shuttle
The executive had nevertheless taken care to find a wording that would satisfy everyone, knowing that the text must be adopted in the same terms in both chambers before a possible Congress. In its current version, the text enshrines “the freedom guaranteed to women” to have recourse to abortion. The result of a synthesis between the constitutional law proposal carried by LFI and adopted in the National Assembly in 2022, which mentions a “fundamental right”, and the version adopted in February 2023 in the Senate which speaks of a “freedom” to resort to abortion.
But, as the examination of the text approaches this Wednesday by their fellow deputies, the senators could want to impose their own terms. Even if it means reducing the chances of the text being voted on by both chambers in the same way. “We can envisage that a certain number of shuttles take place between the National Assembly and the Senate. When it comes to constitutional provisions, we cannot ask senators to align,” Bruno Retailleau immediately warns.
“In the event of a parliamentary shuttle, there is a risk of not finding an agreement if the left wishes to take up the system initially planned in their bill and not that planned by the Elysée,” points out Mélody Mock-Gruet, doctor in public Law. “This text which should have been consensual can then become a political quagmire,” she warns.
