The French Senate has voted, by 166 votes against 152, the insertion in article 34 of the Constitution of a paragraph worded as follows: “The law determines the conditions under which a woman is free to end her pregnancy” The constitutional bill, which had first been presented and approved in the National Assembly, was largely modified.
The ECLJ has stated that it would have preferred the Senate to reject this text. This would have ended the constitutional review process. Such a rejection would have been common sense: abortion has no place in the Constitution, whose role is to provide our country with institutionality.
The ECLJ contributed to making the senators aware of the extreme and unacceptable nature of the initial formulation, adopted by the National Assembly, and according to which “The law guarantees the effectiveness and equal access to the right to ‘Abortion’.
What is the next step now?
The constitutional bill will soon be back in the National Assembly, for a second reading from the new wording.
The European Center of Law and Justice (ECLJ) has stated that they will continue to oppose such addition to the Constitution. Indeed, it is based on the same lie, on the same ideological trap, that of the “freedom of women to abort.”
Social reality shows that abortion is not freedom. Most of the time, abortion is performed, not chosen. In fact, according to the Guttmacher Institute, 75% of women who have resorted to abortion indicate that they were pushed to do so by social or economic constraints. The same woman placed in more favorable circumstances would not have recourse to abortion. It is these circumstances, these social or economic limitations that determine the decision to abort.
Declaring the destruction of human life a human freedom is a terrible choice. Putting freedom before life is suicide. Man is free, but first he is alive. Life is a prerequisite for freedom. Rather than promoting abortion as an abstract right, it would be wiser and more beneficial for everyone, and for society as a whole, to consider abortion for what it is: a serious social problem, possible to prevent.
The ultimate goal of a constitution is to serve the life of the people. Not to act against the common good and the life of the citizens.