France's Macron to seal abortion becoming constitutional right at Paris ceremony
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Transcript
00:00 It was a historic day here in France as it becomes the first country in the world to
00:05 enshrine abortion as a constitutional right.
00:08 President Emmanuel Macron will be overseeing a special ceremony later at Paris' Place
00:14 Vendôme.
00:15 Abortion had been legal in France since 1975.
00:17 Macron last year pledged to better protect it after the U.S. Supreme Court had overturned
00:23 the half-century-old right to the procedure.
00:27 We can speak to our reporter Claire Paquelin standing by at Place Vendôme.
00:32 Hello to you Claire.
00:34 Tell us a little bit about what's going to happen today in the ceremony.
00:43 The ceremony will start at around midday Paris time.
00:47 People are beginning to arrive here at the Place Vendôme.
00:50 This is really about symbolism.
00:52 It's International Women's Day.
00:54 The ceremony is open to the public and a large press machine which dates back to the 1800s,
01:00 the early 1800s, will be used to actually stamp on the great seal of France in hot green
01:07 wax onto this new constitutional law.
01:11 The Justice Minister, Eric Dupont-Moretti, he will be the one to actually use the machine.
01:15 He'll have to turn it round and we understand he needs to be very careful not to turn it
01:19 too far because the stamp could sort of slip off the page.
01:22 And if he doesn't turn it far enough then the seal won't actually be stamped properly
01:26 onto this new constitutional law.
01:28 So it's a tradition dating back now a very long time and we're going to see it in action
01:32 here at the Place Vendôme right in front of the Justice Ministry.
01:37 So final preparations still taking place there.
01:40 Why is there a ceremony in the first place?
01:44 The ceremony isn't necessary for the freedom for a woman to have an abortion, to be enshrined
01:50 in the constitution, the steps to make that necessary happened earlier on in the week
01:54 when we saw both houses of parliament voting in favour of this revision of the French constitution.
02:02 This ceremony really is all about the image, the optics.
02:05 Emmanuel Macron would like these images of that big press machine, he wants these images
02:10 to go down in history.
02:12 It's also an opportunity to honour women of the past, over the ages, who have fought hard
02:19 for equal rights.
02:20 We understand that ten women from the past will be honoured.
02:25 One of them Simone Weil who worked hard as health minister in the 70s to decriminalise
02:31 abortion.
02:32 Simone de Beauvoir will be honoured as well, Josephine Baker and also Giselle Alimé.
02:37 She was a lawyer who worked very hard in the 1970s defending women in court who had had
02:44 an abortion and who were facing jail time.
02:48 So this really is a moment for the image, the symbolism and of course from now on a
02:54 constitutional right will be in the French constitution to guarantee the freedom of women
03:00 to have an abortion.