France to hold final vote on enshrining abortion as a constitutional right

The French parliament will meet in a historic joint session at the Palace of Versailles on Monday for a final vote on enshrining abortion as a constitutional right.

The vote, which is expected to achieve the three-fifths majority necessary to pass, will give women the “guaranteed freedom” to choose an abortion.

The measure has already been passed by the upper and lower houses – the Sénat and the Assemblée Nationale – but final approval by parliamentarians at the joint session at Versailles is needed to effect constitutional change.

The president, Emmanuel Macron, said he had promised to make women’s freedom to choose an abortion “irreversible”. Writing the right to abortion into the constitution is seen as a way of protecting the law that decriminalised abortion in France in 1975.

During the debate on the law, which opened in the national assembly in January, the justice minister, Éric Dupond-Moretti, told MPs that abortion rights were not simply a liberty like any other, “because they allow women to decide their future”.

Aurore Bergé, the minister in charge of equality and the fight against discrimination, added: “This vote will be one of the most important and remarkable of this parliament.”

Once the two houses had agreed the wording of the legal text, Macron had the choice to hold a national referendum or call a joint parliamentary “congress” made up of 577 MPs and 348 senators.

Monday’s session is the first to be held to change the constitution since 2008, when Nicolas Sarkozy took steps to modernise French institutions, including limiting presidents to a maximum of two consecutive five-year terms in office.

Amending the 17th paragraph of article 34 of the French constitution requires a majority of three-fifths of votes cast on Monday afternoon. On paper, this poses no problem since about 760 parliamentarians out of 925 are believed to support the change.

The congress will be overseen by Yaël Braun-Pivet, from Macron’s Renaissance party, who is the equivalent of speaker of the lower house. Parliamentarians will be seated in alphabetic order and the session will open with an address by the prime minister, Gabriel Attal.

The leaders of 18 political groups – 10 from the lower house; eight from the upper – have been invited to each speak for five minutes on the change before the vote. The result is expected in the early evening.

The text will then be authenticated by a “seal of congress” and be sent to the government. Macron will attend a ceremony to finalise the constitutional amendment on Friday, International Women’s Day.

Political impetus was given to the constitutional change after the US supreme court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v Wade, a ruling that had recognised women’s constitutional right to an abortion and had legalised it nationwide.

Rightwing senators from the Républicains party voted against a first attempt to change the French constitution in October 2022. Later that year, the French parliament voted to extend France’s legal limit for ending a pregnancy from 12 to 14 weeks, amid anger that thousands of women were forced to travel abroad each year to terminate pregnancies in countries including the Netherlands, Spain and the UK.