The National Assembly definitively voted, Wednesday, February 23, the extension of the legal deadline for resorting to voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG), from twelve to fourteen weeks of pregnancy. The text, on the initiative of opposition MP Albane Gaillot but supported by the majority, aims to respond to a lack of practitioners and the gradual closure of centers practicing abortion. The deputies approved it with 135 votes, against 47 and 9 abstentions.
The bill aroused strong opposition from part of the right in the Senate and the National Assembly. In magazine interview Shethe candidate Les Républicains in the presidential election, Valérie Pécresse, deplored “a headlong rush that diverts the gaze from the real problem: access to abortion centers, the absence of gynecologists and midwives (…) the free choice of women must be guaranteed”.
Nothing was certain for this text and the choice, on the part of the majority, to support it was presented as a rare mark of independence of the group La République en Marche (LRM) vis-à-vis Emmanuel Macron , who has repeatedly expressed his reluctance on the subject. “The atypical course of this bill is a lesson to be learned about the functioning of our institutions. It shows that we must ignore political labels. When an idea is good, it is neither right nor left.a affirmed Albane Gaillot, former LRM deputy, who has become an environmentalist, who will not stand for re-election in the next legislative elections.
According to Socialist MP Marie-Noëlle Battistel, 2,000 women are forced each year to go abroad to be able to have an abortion because they have exceeded the legal deadlines. Those are the “most vulnerable women”she pointed out.
The bill also plans to extend the practice of instrumental abortion to midwives. “More numerous than doctors in France, they can already perform abortions by medication since 2016”explains M.me Gaillot.
No removal of the “conscience clause”
Initially, the text planned to remove the “specific conscience clause” allowing doctors to refuse to perform an abortion. This development was finally abandoned to allow the bill to move forward in its parliamentary process, which began in October 2020. The Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, personally in favor of extending the abortion period, had made it a prerequisite. It is a text ” responsible “which “shows faithful to the fight for the emancipation of women”greeted Mr. Véran.
The head of state’s unequivocal positions seemed to torpedo the reform for a long time. Marking his opposition in an interview published in July 2021, Mr. Macron still estimated on his return from a visit to Pope Francis this fall that “additional delays are not neutral on a woman’s trauma”. However, he added « respect[er] freedom of parliamentarians.
Christophe Castaner, president of the LRM deputies, finally decided to take up the bill on behalf of the “walkers”. And this, before the government takes the last step by also including it on the agenda of the Senate. A trophy for the deputies of the majority, whose political center of gravity in the National Assembly is deemed to lean to the left, at least on social issues. This extension of the duration of abortion is one of the small pebbles sown at the end of the five-year term to give a more progressive orientation to the macronist balance sheet.