The Senate voted on Wednesday to include the “freedom” of access to abortion in the constitution, in different language than Congress.
After a narrow vote (166 to 152), the Senate passed the 1Well Proposed changes to the constitution on abortion in February.
But not the constitutional bill introduced by LFI representatives, which was voted on in Parliament in November: it is a rewritten version of an amendment by Senator LR Philippe Bas, who won the senator’s favour. There is no question of a “right” to resort to abortion, but a question of “freedom”.
Parliament voted to add this sentence to the Constitution: “The law guarantees effective and equal access to the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy”.
It is a “poorly written” text in the opinion of Philippe Bas, whose party LR has a majority in the Senate. In the committee, the text was rewritten to read: “The law determines the conditions under which a woman can exercise her freedom to terminate a pregnancy”.