Paris [France], October 29 : French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to "enshrine" abortion rights for women in the Constitution to make it "irreversible" by 2024.
Macron said that draft constitutional law will be sent to the Council of State this week and presented to the Council of Ministers by the end of the year.
He further said that by 2024, the women's freedom to have an abortion will be "irreversible"
"Let us engrave in our Constitution the freedom of women to resort to abortion," Macron posted on X (formerly Twitter).
He added, "Based on the work of parliamentarians and associations, the draft constitutional law will be sent to the Council of State this week and presented to the Council of Ministers by the end of the year. In 2024, women's freedom to have an abortion will be irreversible".
Notably, a national law made abortion legal in France in 1975, and no serious threat to its legality exists today. But, the decision of the US Supreme Court last year to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion has galvanized French efforts to protect and recognize abortion as an inalienable right, New York Times reported earlier this year.
Earlier this year, Macron had announced that a bill would be prepared in the coming months to enshrine in the Constitution the freedom to choose a "voluntary termination of a pregnancy."
"Courts in other countries in the world have returned to the question of women's rights because reactionary ideologues are seeking their revenge on the lawyers and activists who once made them retreat," NYT quoted Macron as saying.
In practice, Constitutional revision is a long process requiring either a referendum or agreement by the National Assembly and Senate on an identical text that would have to be voted on by the two houses meeting together at Versailles.
Macron marked International Women's Day this year, by honouring Halimi and pitching for enshrining the abortion rights for women in the Constitution.
Halimi, who died in 2020 aged 93, was a Tunisian-born French attorney and socialist lawmaker widely recognized for her unstinting struggle for the legalization of abortion in France, which occurred two years after the Roe vs Wade ruling in the US, NYT reported.
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