16 ms·

France enshrines 'freedom' to abortion in Constitution, in world first

137 points by Qision 3y ago

yodsanklai 3y ago
Why not, but abortion in France wasn't threatened in any way. It seems to me like a marketing coup from far-left parties who are utterly powerless when it comes to economic policies. Also I'm not sure what's the extent of this right. In France, AFIU in normal circumstances, you can't legally abort after 14 weeks. Is that challenged by this new constitutional rule? EDIT: even though Macron ultimately proposed this, it was initiated by a far-left representative, Mathilde Panot. Her party, LFI, advertises this as their own victory. https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/ivg-dans-la-constitution-mathilde-panot-erigee-en-heritiere-de-simone-veil-par-les-insoumis-05-03-2024-2554229_23.php#11 https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/ivg-dans-la-constitution-math... > Mathilde Panot, présidente du groupe La France insoumise à l'Assemblée nationale, a été à l'initiative de la proposition de loi constitutionnelle pour garantir le droit à l'IVG.
- slily 3y ago
  I agree with your takeaway and had the exact same question: does this mean there is a constitutional right to abort at any age, or do the prior legal limits apply? So far I cannot find an answer even in French papers. Edit: actually, it does state that the [current] law determines the boundaries of that protection.
  - avisser 3y ago
    Looks like it's 14 weeks (https://www.npr.org/2024/03/04/1235217454/france-abortion-rights-constitution https://www.npr.org/2024/03/04/1235217454/france-abortion-ri...)
    - orwin 3y ago
      It's 14 weeks 'no question asked' abortion. For non-medical reason it can be pushed further, as long as 3 third party (2 doctors and a social worker) say 'ok'. Further than that, it's only for medical reasons, again if 2 (or 3?) doctors say you should do it. I've actually had this discussion two years ago? With a doctor who specialized in finding out genetic defects in the 90s, basically it's very rare to have abortion after the 14th week, and it's only when some developmental issues are found, or when carrying the pregnancy is dangerous (in some cases labor is induced while the pregnant woman under anesthesia, but the fœtus is known to be unviable, those forced labor seems to be the worst situation mentally for patient and sometime medical personnel)
- FranzFerdiNaN 3y ago
  It wasnt under threat, but America shows how easily it can be. But sure, make it about some ''far-left' conspiracy or whatever.
  - seren 3y ago
    And closer home, Poland. So it is not a far fetched idea or fantasy.
    - peoplefromibiza 3y ago
      > And closer home, Poland Ironically abortion has been abolished in Poland after it joined the EU. In 1932 it was the first country in Europe outside the Soviet Union to legalize abortion in cases of rape and threat to maternal health
      - hef19898 3y ago
        Basically when the far-rihht Catholics took power. It seems the new government wants to reverse the worst policies from the past.
- peoplefromibiza 3y ago
  the Constitution article states > “The law determines the conditions under which the freedom guaranteed to women to resort to voluntary termination of pregnancy is exercised” So it doesn't really address the issue, it just uses the words "voluntary termination of pregnancy" associated with guaranteed freedom for the first time in history.
- chownie 3y ago
  The idea that roe v wade could've been under threat was considered laughably implausible until it wasn't. Securing these de facto rights and transforming them into de jure rights makes a lot of sense to me, in light of that.
  - yodsanklai 3y ago
    France isn't the US. Abortion has always been a sensitive topic in the US, not at all in France.
    - Moldoteck 3y ago
      france isn't us, but we've seen how dangerous it is, instead of hoping to not get in this situation ever, why not engrave this in constitution so that changing it again would be extremely hard?
      - hef19898 3y ago
        Some people don't like the French solution precisely because it is very hard to reverse it now. Downplaying the risk of a French, or European, version of throwing out Roe v. Wade is the easiest way to keep that particular door open. And pretending that not to be the case, well, I feel insulted by being played for an idiot.
    - rayiner 3y ago
      Abortion was illegal in France until 1975. It was legalized by the legislature, and the challenge to the law went up to the Court of Cassation, which upheld the law ruling that the government can properly regulate abortion (which includes permitting it up to 12 weeks, as the 1975 law did). Two years earlier, the US Supreme Court had struck down any state regulation of abortion prior to viability (around 22-24) weeks. Effectively, it imposed an abortion regime far broader than France’s by judicial fiat.
    - psini 3y ago
      To badly quote Simone de Beauvoir: "One political, religious or economic crisis will be enough to challenge women's rights, our rights. Throughout your life, you must remain vigilant". GP is right that things seem unthinkable do not stay unthinkable for eternity.
- realusername 3y ago
  Macron isn't far left by any stretch of the imagination haha. As for the conditions, the French constitution usually states general principles so it won't and doesn't need to be as precise as having a number of weeks.
  - graemep 3y ago
    > As for the conditions, the French constitution usually states general principles so it won't and doesn't need to be as precise as having a number of weeks. So will it make a practical difference or is it just a gesture?
    - realusername 3y ago
      It will, if the laws being passed are preventing a reasonable access, it can be repealed.
      - graemep 3y ago
        but the current laws, which (as is typical in Europe) have far lower term limits than many US states, the UK or (IIRC) anglophone countries in general is not affected?
  - yodsanklai 3y ago
    This wasn't Macron's idea. It was proposed by communists in 2017, and more recently by far left's LFI.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Oh, those pasky far left communists who just want to give people freedom over their bodies. How dare they???? \s
    - realusername 3y ago
      Sure but the inspiration wasn't from them here.
  - 3y ago
- jraph 3y ago
  Why make things up and assume when you could spend the time you took to write your comment to read the facts? > from far-left parties No. Emmanuel Macron, the president, fairly right-sided, pushed it and then everybody welcomed it except some people at the right. Now of course he could use something good for his image, he pretty much pissed most people a few months ago with how he used every non democratic ways he could to push his retirement reform despite a majority of people being against it (including people mostly agreeing with the content of this reform, but not comfortable with how he handled it). Actually far-left sided parties are vanishingly small and wouldn't have the power to push something like this. > who are utterly powerless when it comes to economic policies Off-topic and not needed here. Edit to answer the edit: La France Insoumise is hardly far left. It is roughly between le parti socialiste which had almost vanished two years ago, and le parti communiste, itself before Lutte Ouvrière and the NPA. I believe "far" is synonymous with "ideas I really don't like" and better avoided anyway. It doesn't do any good, let's properly reject bad ideas with proper arguments instead.
  - wesselbindt 3y ago
    >> who are utterly powerless when it comes to economic policies >Off-topic and not needed here. French politics is off-topic in a thread on French politics?
    - jraph 3y ago
      "politics" is very broad. Should I mention Bézier curves when discussing instruction sets just because both are related to computer science, without any other connection? This inflammatory gratuitous hot take without any evidence to prove it on a subject unrelated to the discussion at hand (far left parties are not especially more related to this new constitutional abortion right than any other party) just doesn't belong here and will probably not lead to interesting discussions. Whether it is true or not.
  - yodsanklai 3y ago
    > Emmanuel Macron, the president, fairly right-sided, pushed it and then everybody welcomed it except some people at the right. LFI (france far left party) wants to call this "Loi Panot" and claim the victory. Panot is the LFI representative who has initiated this law. Macron eventually thought it would be good to surf this wave. > Dans une publication partagée sur X, le groupe parlementaire a réalisé un montage illustrant Mathilde Panot, la cheffe de file des Insoumis, aux côtés de Simone Veil, icône de la lutte contre la discrimination des femmes en France. « On l'a fait ! » illustre l'image avec « #LoiPanot ».
rayiner 3y ago
France amending its 66-year old Constitution to include abortion is a “world first.” Few Europeans would assert that their constitutions already guaranteed such a right before those country’s regulated abortion under civil law. The ECHR has repeatedly declined invitations to find such a right in the EU Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, many in America denounce the Supreme Court for observing that our 235 year old constitution isn’t any different from those (often much younger) European constitutions in that respect.
- hef19898 3y ago
  People dennounce the SCOTUS for throwing out precedent, and allowing state laws threating access to family planning and directly threatening the life of women. The age of the, honestly, sub-par constitution of the USA has nothing to do with it.
- pjc50 3y ago
  The SCOTUS found two different answers in the "text" of the constitution depending on who was appointed to it. Which is the risk of a pure legalistic approach; it's difficult for a right to survive against a majority that actively oppose it.
  - boxed 3y ago
    Or in this case a minority with the will to actually fight over it.
  - hobs 3y ago
    To be clear, a majority of people in the USA support access to abortion, its the fact that a minority court was packed with gerrymandered districts and a political party dead set on ending democracy that we got here.
    - ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
      I figured it was because the Democrats never bothered to make it a law.
oulipo 3y ago
Proud to be French, and guaranteeing freedom of action on their bodies to women
- isolli 3y ago
  In case some readers don't know where your user name comes from ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo
- caeril 3y ago
  Which is great, but it seems that nobody is guaranteeing freedom of action to men. Just as women should have the freedom from parenthood, so should men. But if a woman chooses to have a child, the man is still compelled to fatherhood, at least from a financial perspective. And in France specifically, you have no right to know if you are actually the presumed father via paternity test. So while this is some degree of progress, the already-enormous disparity of reproductive rights has widened even more.
  - fennecbutt 3y ago
    Yeah, as a gay man I believe that men who have sex with women shouldn't be compelled into fatherhood just because they had sex, if that wasn't the intention. Cruely, the answer usually seems to be "Well, don't have sex then". The only reproductive right men have at all is the choice to use the limited birth control available to them (condoms). If they are lied to about their partner being on birth control then they are automatically out of the picture when it comes to choice around "what happens after". I would love to see a birth control pill for men, though the typical sexist response to that I've heard from many women is "men would just forget to take it as if we could trust them". Tables turning.
helf 3y ago
GOOD. There shouldn't even be a question about this. I have family members who would have died if the current state of abortion bullshit in the US had been a thing. All these fucks voting out protections THEY ENJOYED their entire reproductive lives is so damn infuriating.
- ourmandave 3y ago
  Don't sugar coat it. Tell us how you really feel. =)
- Larrikin 3y ago
  At this point its like school shootings. Vote for people trying to fix the issue and hope someone in power, that opposes that position, loses a loved one, due to that position, when you hear about the problem in the news [1]. The only person so far that seems to have gotten worse after experiencing gun violence themselves is Scalise [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/11/tennessee-governor-bill-lee-red-flag-law-background-checks-00091404 https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/11/tennessee-governor-...
- exabrial 3y ago
  I disagree. There most vulnerable are those without voices.
  - pquki4 3y ago
    Nah, they have plenty of voices on Facebook or when they call their senators.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Don't forget TikTok and Telegram.
- lm28469 3y ago
  > I have family members who would have died This isn't about that scenario. In case you get an abortion for a purely medical reason you can abort at any point in the pregnancy, 1 week or 9 months, it doesn't matter. The one we just put in the constitution is the type of abortion you can request for any reasons up to 14 weeks
fguerraz 3y ago
The article is actually missing the point slightly. The French right wing of the senate has made this seemingly unimportant edit: it's not a right to abortion, it's a freedom. This changes everything. If it's a freedom, the job of the government is to ensure that nobody can stop you from doing it, but unlike with a right, it has no obligation of means, it doesn't have to fund free abortion clinics, make sure that hospitals are properly staffed, that every woman on the French territory has actually access to a clinic without travelling long distances or paying an unaffordable price.
- peoplefromibiza 3y ago
  good point! there are news circulating here that the right wing is celebrating, it must be about that.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    If you ignore the word "guaranteed" just before freedom, sure. If you don't, well, there is not much pro-live can be happy about.
    - fguerraz 3y ago
      I am not making this up, this is abundantly commented upon in the French press.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        I knowm I also know enough about law to tell that removing a freedom is a far cry from removing a "guaranteed freedom". And of course the press is reporting, the right has to claim a victory, the topic itself and the far right whining guarantee clicks. And we all fall for it. Again.
    - peoplefromibiza 3y ago
      > If you ignore the word "guaranteed" it simply means that your freedom is guaranteed, not the actual right. legalese is a very sneaky duolingo. In the Italian constitution the catholics replaced the sentence in the first article proposed by the left "Italy is a democratic Republic founded on workers." with "Italy is a democratic Republic founded on labour." which completely changed the intended meaning (it works much better in Italian where workers is "lavoratori" and labour is "lavoro", they look and sound very similar, but are not the same thing). > there is not much pro-live can be happy about but they are, there must be a reason.
jawns 3y ago
This was a vote that had very little dissent; it easily surpassed the supermajority that was required to amend the constitution. There was only one major group that spoke out against the decision: the Catholic Church. Almost half of the French population reported that they were Catholic in a 2020 survey, but it's clear that when it comes to abortion, almost no French Catholics are influenced by the Church's strong opposition to abortion. That's in stark contrast to the US, where opposition to abortion, mostly among Christian denominations, has remained an intractable issue. People predicted that after Roe V. Wade was decided, opposition to abortion would fade away, but it never did. Indeed, for the better part of 50 years, opposition fluctuated only a few percentage points, unlike almost every other major social issue.
- oliwarner 3y ago
  > Almost half of the French population reported that they were Catholic If you break that down generationally, you see 70% in 70+, scaling down to about 15% in young adults, with atheism mopping up the difference. The older people may have believed, the middle cohort were raised by believers and think of themselves as Catholic by creed, but they haven't passed it on to their kids. The same is generally true in the rest of Europe. The social contract that everyone goes to church on Sunday has broken.
  - silent_cal 3y ago
    This is always so interesting to me. Are you European? Or do you have any insight as to why this might be happening?
    - silverquiet 3y ago
      Not a European, but an American lapsed Catholic. I mean... it's pretty obvious that religion is make-believe, right? I'd love to believe it, but I've never seen one iota of evidence for beliefs of the church. Basically there was no reason to keep going once I realized that, other than to make my parents happy.
      - 3y ago
throwaway74537 3y ago
[flagged]
tupolef 3y ago
Without giving a position on the legitimacy of this question, I nevertheless point out to foreign observers that this, above all, shows to what extent France now assumes its colony status. We are in the greatest demographic, energy and financial crisis since the Second World War and on the verge of armed conflict with Russia. Our legislators have repeatedly refused to have a say on these issues in recent months, but while we had no problem with the status of abortion in France, they took up the issue as soon as there was a problem about it in the USA. As they say at the UN and the European Commission: "always put a Frenchman at the head of all international institutions, they are the only ones who will never defend the interests of their country".
- hef19898 3y ago
  France is a colony? Who is their colonial overlord? And is this overlord also controlling the EU? And is this overlord truels suvereign, or does he answer to higher powers as well? If so, who are those powers, them? Because if it is them, I have a problem, they keep loosing my socks during laundery and it drives me crazy.
  - lm28469 3y ago
    Culturally we import more and more things from the US. It used to be music and movies, now it's identity politics and cultural issues
    - hef19898 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - lm28469 3y ago
        Time to leave the online world and open a few books my friend... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_imperialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_imperialism
        3y ago
tptacek 3y ago
My understanding is that French abortion protections are somewhat more conservative than those of Kansas, which for instance has a 21 week cutoff versus France's 14, and requires no additional consults or cooling off period.
- tupolef 3y ago
  It may be a little more conservative than Kansas, but we came close to being much, much more liberal. In 2020, our parliament voted for abortion up to 9 months for mother's psychological motivations. So a murder during childbirth... Fortunately some people noticed (not the journalists) that it may be harsh for the doctor doing the act. It didn't pass the Senate. https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/loi-bioethique-ces-dispositions-surprises-votees-a-la-sauvette-20200802 https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/loi-bioethique-ces-...
  - cpach 3y ago
    Do you have any other source that’s not pay-walled?
  - almatabata 3y ago
    I found another article discussing this and they seem to indicate this is already legal with medical oversight. https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2020/08/04/projet-de-loi-bioethique-les-deputes-ont-ils-autorise-l-avortement-pour-detresse-psychosociale_1795927/ https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2020/08/04/projet-de-loi...
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  Legally maybe. There's a massive difference in access though. Kansas has like two clinics for the whole state. Also I'm not up to date on french abortion law or anything but people like to make these comparisons without taking into account medical-cultural differences that are extremely relevant. In the US an abortion cutoff is likely to truly be the last date you can access one at all, except maybe for life threatening medical situations but even that exception is being closed out. In the french model the cutoff date is the last date you can access one on your own initiative without significant barriers. After that they get increasingly difficult with a higher degree of medical and possibly legal scrutiny, but the threshold is still far below "you must be dying" for most of that time.
Tycho 3y ago
[flagged]
martiuk 3y ago
[flagged]
- silent_cal 3y ago
  [flagged]
snapplebobapple 3y ago
Can we get this extended to the 403 trimester?

137 points by Qision 3y ago

Why not, but abortion in France wasn't threatened in any way. It seems to me like a marketing coup from far-left parties who are utterly powerless when it comes to economic policies. Also I'm not sure what's the extent of this right. In France, AFIU in normal circumstances, you can't legally abort after 14 weeks. Is that challenged by this new constitutional rule? EDIT: even though Macron ultimately proposed this, it was initiated by a far-left representative, Mathilde Panot. Her party, LFI, advertises this as their own victory. https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/ivg-dans-la-constitution-mathilde-panot-erigee-en-heritiere-de-simone-veil-par-les-insoumis-05-03-2024-2554229_23.php#11 https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/ivg-dans-la-constitution-math... > Mathilde Panot, présidente du groupe La France insoumise à l'Assemblée nationale, a été à l'initiative de la proposition de loi constitutionnelle pour garantir le droit à l'IVG.

slily 3y ago
I agree with your takeaway and had the exact same question: does this mean there is a constitutional right to abort at any age, or do the prior legal limits apply? So far I cannot find an answer even in French papers. Edit: actually, it does state that the [current] law determines the boundaries of that protection.
- avisser 3y ago
  Looks like it's 14 weeks (https://www.npr.org/2024/03/04/1235217454/france-abortion-rights-constitution https://www.npr.org/2024/03/04/1235217454/france-abortion-ri...)
  - orwin 3y ago
    It's 14 weeks 'no question asked' abortion. For non-medical reason it can be pushed further, as long as 3 third party (2 doctors and a social worker) say 'ok'. Further than that, it's only for medical reasons, again if 2 (or 3?) doctors say you should do it. I've actually had this discussion two years ago? With a doctor who specialized in finding out genetic defects in the 90s, basically it's very rare to have abortion after the 14th week, and it's only when some developmental issues are found, or when carrying the pregnancy is dangerous (in some cases labor is induced while the pregnant woman under anesthesia, but the fœtus is known to be unviable, those forced labor seems to be the worst situation mentally for patient and sometime medical personnel)
FranzFerdiNaN 3y ago
It wasnt under threat, but America shows how easily it can be. But sure, make it about some ''far-left' conspiracy or whatever.
- seren 3y ago
  And closer home, Poland. So it is not a far fetched idea or fantasy.
  - peoplefromibiza 3y ago
    > And closer home, Poland Ironically abortion has been abolished in Poland after it joined the EU. In 1932 it was the first country in Europe outside the Soviet Union to legalize abortion in cases of rape and threat to maternal health
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Basically when the far-rihht Catholics took power. It seems the new government wants to reverse the worst policies from the past.
peoplefromibiza 3y ago
the Constitution article states > “The law determines the conditions under which the freedom guaranteed to women to resort to voluntary termination of pregnancy is exercised” So it doesn't really address the issue, it just uses the words "voluntary termination of pregnancy" associated with guaranteed freedom for the first time in history.
chownie 3y ago
The idea that roe v wade could've been under threat was considered laughably implausible until it wasn't. Securing these de facto rights and transforming them into de jure rights makes a lot of sense to me, in light of that.
- yodsanklai 3y ago
  France isn't the US. Abortion has always been a sensitive topic in the US, not at all in France.
  - Moldoteck 3y ago
    france isn't us, but we've seen how dangerous it is, instead of hoping to not get in this situation ever, why not engrave this in constitution so that changing it again would be extremely hard?
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Some people don't like the French solution precisely because it is very hard to reverse it now. Downplaying the risk of a French, or European, version of throwing out Roe v. Wade is the easiest way to keep that particular door open. And pretending that not to be the case, well, I feel insulted by being played for an idiot.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    Abortion was illegal in France until 1975. It was legalized by the legislature, and the challenge to the law went up to the Court of Cassation, which upheld the law ruling that the government can properly regulate abortion (which includes permitting it up to 12 weeks, as the 1975 law did). Two years earlier, the US Supreme Court had struck down any state regulation of abortion prior to viability (around 22-24) weeks. Effectively, it imposed an abortion regime far broader than France’s by judicial fiat.
  - psini 3y ago
    To badly quote Simone de Beauvoir: "One political, religious or economic crisis will be enough to challenge women's rights, our rights. Throughout your life, you must remain vigilant". GP is right that things seem unthinkable do not stay unthinkable for eternity.
realusername 3y ago
Macron isn't far left by any stretch of the imagination haha. As for the conditions, the French constitution usually states general principles so it won't and doesn't need to be as precise as having a number of weeks.
- graemep 3y ago
  > As for the conditions, the French constitution usually states general principles so it won't and doesn't need to be as precise as having a number of weeks. So will it make a practical difference or is it just a gesture?
  - realusername 3y ago
    It will, if the laws being passed are preventing a reasonable access, it can be repealed.
    - graemep 3y ago
      but the current laws, which (as is typical in Europe) have far lower term limits than many US states, the UK or (IIRC) anglophone countries in general is not affected?
- yodsanklai 3y ago
  This wasn't Macron's idea. It was proposed by communists in 2017, and more recently by far left's LFI.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Oh, those pasky far left communists who just want to give people freedom over their bodies. How dare they???? \s
  - realusername 3y ago
    Sure but the inspiration wasn't from them here.
- 3y ago
jraph 3y ago
Why make things up and assume when you could spend the time you took to write your comment to read the facts? > from far-left parties No. Emmanuel Macron, the president, fairly right-sided, pushed it and then everybody welcomed it except some people at the right. Now of course he could use something good for his image, he pretty much pissed most people a few months ago with how he used every non democratic ways he could to push his retirement reform despite a majority of people being against it (including people mostly agreeing with the content of this reform, but not comfortable with how he handled it). Actually far-left sided parties are vanishingly small and wouldn't have the power to push something like this. > who are utterly powerless when it comes to economic policies Off-topic and not needed here. Edit to answer the edit: La France Insoumise is hardly far left. It is roughly between le parti socialiste which had almost vanished two years ago, and le parti communiste, itself before Lutte Ouvrière and the NPA. I believe "far" is synonymous with "ideas I really don't like" and better avoided anyway. It doesn't do any good, let's properly reject bad ideas with proper arguments instead.
- wesselbindt 3y ago
  >> who are utterly powerless when it comes to economic policies >Off-topic and not needed here. French politics is off-topic in a thread on French politics?
  - jraph 3y ago
    "politics" is very broad. Should I mention Bézier curves when discussing instruction sets just because both are related to computer science, without any other connection? This inflammatory gratuitous hot take without any evidence to prove it on a subject unrelated to the discussion at hand (far left parties are not especially more related to this new constitutional abortion right than any other party) just doesn't belong here and will probably not lead to interesting discussions. Whether it is true or not.
- yodsanklai 3y ago
  > Emmanuel Macron, the president, fairly right-sided, pushed it and then everybody welcomed it except some people at the right. LFI (france far left party) wants to call this "Loi Panot" and claim the victory. Panot is the LFI representative who has initiated this law. Macron eventually thought it would be good to surf this wave. > Dans une publication partagée sur X, le groupe parlementaire a réalisé un montage illustrant Mathilde Panot, la cheffe de file des Insoumis, aux côtés de Simone Veil, icône de la lutte contre la discrimination des femmes en France. « On l'a fait ! » illustre l'image avec « #LoiPanot ».

rayiner 3y ago

France amending its 66-year old Constitution to include abortion is a “world first.” Few Europeans would assert that their constitutions already guaranteed such a right before those country’s regulated abortion under civil law. The ECHR has repeatedly declined invitations to find such a right in the EU Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, many in America denounce the Supreme Court for observing that our 235 year old constitution isn’t any different from those (often much younger) European constitutions in that respect.

hef19898 3y ago
People dennounce the SCOTUS for throwing out precedent, and allowing state laws threating access to family planning and directly threatening the life of women. The age of the, honestly, sub-par constitution of the USA has nothing to do with it.
pjc50 3y ago
The SCOTUS found two different answers in the "text" of the constitution depending on who was appointed to it. Which is the risk of a pure legalistic approach; it's difficult for a right to survive against a majority that actively oppose it.
- boxed 3y ago
  Or in this case a minority with the will to actually fight over it.
- hobs 3y ago
  To be clear, a majority of people in the USA support access to abortion, its the fact that a minority court was packed with gerrymandered districts and a political party dead set on ending democracy that we got here.
  - ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
    I figured it was because the Democrats never bothered to make it a law.

oulipo 3y ago

Proud to be French, and guaranteeing freedom of action on their bodies to women

isolli 3y ago
In case some readers don't know where your user name comes from ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo
caeril 3y ago
Which is great, but it seems that nobody is guaranteeing freedom of action to men. Just as women should have the freedom from parenthood, so should men. But if a woman chooses to have a child, the man is still compelled to fatherhood, at least from a financial perspective. And in France specifically, you have no right to know if you are actually the presumed father via paternity test. So while this is some degree of progress, the already-enormous disparity of reproductive rights has widened even more.
- fennecbutt 3y ago
  Yeah, as a gay man I believe that men who have sex with women shouldn't be compelled into fatherhood just because they had sex, if that wasn't the intention. Cruely, the answer usually seems to be "Well, don't have sex then". The only reproductive right men have at all is the choice to use the limited birth control available to them (condoms). If they are lied to about their partner being on birth control then they are automatically out of the picture when it comes to choice around "what happens after". I would love to see a birth control pill for men, though the typical sexist response to that I've heard from many women is "men would just forget to take it as if we could trust them". Tables turning.

helf 3y ago

GOOD. There shouldn't even be a question about this. I have family members who would have died if the current state of abortion bullshit in the US had been a thing. All these fucks voting out protections THEY ENJOYED their entire reproductive lives is so damn infuriating.

ourmandave 3y ago
Don't sugar coat it. Tell us how you really feel. =)
Larrikin 3y ago
At this point its like school shootings. Vote for people trying to fix the issue and hope someone in power, that opposes that position, loses a loved one, due to that position, when you hear about the problem in the news [1]. The only person so far that seems to have gotten worse after experiencing gun violence themselves is Scalise [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/11/tennessee-governor-bill-lee-red-flag-law-background-checks-00091404 https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/11/tennessee-governor-...
exabrial 3y ago
I disagree. There most vulnerable are those without voices.
- pquki4 3y ago
  Nah, they have plenty of voices on Facebook or when they call their senators.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Don't forget TikTok and Telegram.
lm28469 3y ago
> I have family members who would have died This isn't about that scenario. In case you get an abortion for a purely medical reason you can abort at any point in the pregnancy, 1 week or 9 months, it doesn't matter. The one we just put in the constitution is the type of abortion you can request for any reasons up to 14 weeks

fguerraz 3y ago

The article is actually missing the point slightly. The French right wing of the senate has made this seemingly unimportant edit: it's not a right to abortion, it's a freedom. This changes everything. If it's a freedom, the job of the government is to ensure that nobody can stop you from doing it, but unlike with a right, it has no obligation of means, it doesn't have to fund free abortion clinics, make sure that hospitals are properly staffed, that every woman on the French territory has actually access to a clinic without travelling long distances or paying an unaffordable price.

peoplefromibiza 3y ago
good point! there are news circulating here that the right wing is celebrating, it must be about that.
- hef19898 3y ago
  If you ignore the word "guaranteed" just before freedom, sure. If you don't, well, there is not much pro-live can be happy about.
  - fguerraz 3y ago
    I am not making this up, this is abundantly commented upon in the French press.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      I knowm I also know enough about law to tell that removing a freedom is a far cry from removing a "guaranteed freedom". And of course the press is reporting, the right has to claim a victory, the topic itself and the far right whining guarantee clicks. And we all fall for it. Again.
  - peoplefromibiza 3y ago
    > If you ignore the word "guaranteed" it simply means that your freedom is guaranteed, not the actual right. legalese is a very sneaky duolingo. In the Italian constitution the catholics replaced the sentence in the first article proposed by the left "Italy is a democratic Republic founded on workers." with "Italy is a democratic Republic founded on labour." which completely changed the intended meaning (it works much better in Italian where workers is "lavoratori" and labour is "lavoro", they look and sound very similar, but are not the same thing). > there is not much pro-live can be happy about but they are, there must be a reason.

jawns 3y ago

This was a vote that had very little dissent; it easily surpassed the supermajority that was required to amend the constitution. There was only one major group that spoke out against the decision: the Catholic Church. Almost half of the French population reported that they were Catholic in a 2020 survey, but it's clear that when it comes to abortion, almost no French Catholics are influenced by the Church's strong opposition to abortion. That's in stark contrast to the US, where opposition to abortion, mostly among Christian denominations, has remained an intractable issue. People predicted that after Roe V. Wade was decided, opposition to abortion would fade away, but it never did. Indeed, for the better part of 50 years, opposition fluctuated only a few percentage points, unlike almost every other major social issue.

oliwarner 3y ago
> Almost half of the French population reported that they were Catholic If you break that down generationally, you see 70% in 70+, scaling down to about 15% in young adults, with atheism mopping up the difference. The older people may have believed, the middle cohort were raised by believers and think of themselves as Catholic by creed, but they haven't passed it on to their kids. The same is generally true in the rest of Europe. The social contract that everyone goes to church on Sunday has broken.
- silent_cal 3y ago
  This is always so interesting to me. Are you European? Or do you have any insight as to why this might be happening?
  - silverquiet 3y ago
    Not a European, but an American lapsed Catholic. I mean... it's pretty obvious that religion is make-believe, right? I'd love to believe it, but I've never seen one iota of evidence for beliefs of the church. Basically there was no reason to keep going once I realized that, other than to make my parents happy.
    - 3y ago

throwaway74537 3y ago

[flagged]

tupolef 3y ago

Without giving a position on the legitimacy of this question, I nevertheless point out to foreign observers that this, above all, shows to what extent France now assumes its colony status. We are in the greatest demographic, energy and financial crisis since the Second World War and on the verge of armed conflict with Russia. Our legislators have repeatedly refused to have a say on these issues in recent months, but while we had no problem with the status of abortion in France, they took up the issue as soon as there was a problem about it in the USA. As they say at the UN and the European Commission: "always put a Frenchman at the head of all international institutions, they are the only ones who will never defend the interests of their country".

hef19898 3y ago
France is a colony? Who is their colonial overlord? And is this overlord also controlling the EU? And is this overlord truels suvereign, or does he answer to higher powers as well? If so, who are those powers, them? Because if it is them, I have a problem, they keep loosing my socks during laundery and it drives me crazy.
- lm28469 3y ago
  Culturally we import more and more things from the US. It used to be music and movies, now it's identity politics and cultural issues
  - hef19898 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - lm28469 3y ago
      Time to leave the online world and open a few books my friend... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_imperialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_imperialism
      - 3y ago

tptacek 3y ago

My understanding is that French abortion protections are somewhat more conservative than those of Kansas, which for instance has a 21 week cutoff versus France's 14, and requires no additional consults or cooling off period.

tupolef 3y ago
It may be a little more conservative than Kansas, but we came close to being much, much more liberal. In 2020, our parliament voted for abortion up to 9 months for mother's psychological motivations. So a murder during childbirth... Fortunately some people noticed (not the journalists) that it may be harsh for the doctor doing the act. It didn't pass the Senate. https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/loi-bioethique-ces-dispositions-surprises-votees-a-la-sauvette-20200802 https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/loi-bioethique-ces-...
- cpach 3y ago
  Do you have any other source that’s not pay-walled?
- almatabata 3y ago
  I found another article discussing this and they seem to indicate this is already legal with medical oversight. https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2020/08/04/projet-de-loi-bioethique-les-deputes-ont-ils-autorise-l-avortement-pour-detresse-psychosociale_1795927/ https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2020/08/04/projet-de-loi...
giraffe_lady 3y ago
Legally maybe. There's a massive difference in access though. Kansas has like two clinics for the whole state. Also I'm not up to date on french abortion law or anything but people like to make these comparisons without taking into account medical-cultural differences that are extremely relevant. In the US an abortion cutoff is likely to truly be the last date you can access one at all, except maybe for life threatening medical situations but even that exception is being closed out. In the french model the cutoff date is the last date you can access one on your own initiative without significant barriers. After that they get increasingly difficult with a higher degree of medical and possibly legal scrutiny, but the threshold is still far below "you must be dying" for most of that time.

Tycho 3y ago

[flagged]

martiuk 3y ago

[flagged]

silent_cal 3y ago
[flagged]

snapplebobapple 3y ago

Can we get this extended to the 403 trimester?