France will enshrine the right to abortion in its Constitution, President Emmanuel Macron said on social media on Sunday, AFP reported.

The corresponding bill will be “presented to the Council of Ministers by the end of the year” so that “by 2024, women’s freedom to have an abortion is irreversible,” Macron wrote.

The head of state said this on March 8, on International Women’s Rights Day, in response to the concern caused by the cancellation of a decision that guaranteed the right to abortion throughout the country a year and a half ago. The United States.

On October 4, Emmanuel Macron confirmed his desire to see this promise fulfilled.

On March 8, he declared: “I expressed the hope that we would be able to find a text that would reconcile the views of the National Assembly and the Senate and allow the Congress to be convened at Versailles.”

The draft of the revision of the Constitution does not necessarily have to be finally submitted to a referendum, as it can also be approved by a three-fifths majority of the two houses of the parliament assembled in Congress.

In France, the right to abortion (the voluntary termination of pregnancy) has now been recognized as common law since 1975, and enshrining it in constitutional law would complicate any future attempts by lawmakers to repeal or seriously undermine it, according to its advocates. .

According to a November 2022 public opinion poll, almost nine out of ten French people (86%) favor enshrining the right to abortion in the Constitution.

The latest official figures, published in September, show that the number of abortions in France will rise to 234,000 in 2022 after two years of sharp decline due to the Covid-19 epidemic. (photo: Traci Hahn | Dreamstime.com)