French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday he supports including the right to abortion in the constitution, a move he said would be a signal of solidarity with women around the world, Reuters reported.

Macron made this statement on International Women’s Day at a ceremony honoring the memory of French lawyer and feminist of Tunisian origin Giselle Halimi, who died in 2020 at the age of 93. She was a strong defender of abortion rights.

“I want today (…) to celebrate the freedom of women to resort to the voluntary termination of pregnancy in the basic law, to solemnly assure that nothing can prevent or undo what will thus be irreversible,” said President Macron. from the hall of the first chamber of the Court of Appeal from the Palace of Justice in Paris, News.ro reports.

It will “send a universal message of solidarity to all women who see this freedom suppressed today,” he said.

“The progress achieved in the parliamentary debate (…) I hope will allow this freedom to be written into our fundamental text in the draft law on the revision of the Constitution, which will be prepared in the coming months,” Emmanuel Macron added. .

Both houses of the French parliament have already voted to enshrine the right in the constitution, although the Senate called it a “freedom” and the National Assembly called it a “right” to abortion.

The move comes after the US Supreme Court last June overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized women’s constitutional right to an abortion.

The ceremony honoring Gisele Halimi, organized at the Palais des Justices in Paris on the occasion of International Women’s Rights Day, took place in the presence of former President François Hollande and President of the Constitutional Council Laurent Fabius.

In a landmark 1972 case, Halimi secured the acquittal of a minor who was tried for an abortion after she became pregnant through rape.