REPLAY: France inscribes the right to abortion in its constitution
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00:00 Let's listen in to the ceremony taking place at Paris' Place Vendôme.
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01:42 For the viewers who are just tuning in, you'll see there the Justice Minister, Eric Dupond-Moretti,
01:47 who's using a 100 kilogram, that is for those with imperial measurements, 220 pound seal,
01:53 to press from 1810 to imprint this historic amendment in France's 1958 constitution.
02:02 Indeed, the country now becoming the first ever in the world to enshrine abortion rights in its constitution.
02:09 It includes the phrase, "the freedom of women to have recourse to an abortion which is guaranteed."
02:17 And we'll, obviously we're now waiting for President Macron to speak.
02:23 Keep in mind, this is of course International Women's Day.
02:27 It is an important day for this to occur.
02:30 And the vote in the Senate having been timed in the hope that this would happen today on Friday, March the 8th.
02:37 And Annette, this is going to make a lot of headlines around the world.
02:40 It already has this week after the historical vote we saw on Monday from both chambers of Parliament.
02:44 Do you think other countries might follow suit?
02:47 Certainly, that's the hope.
02:49 But again, it comes against a backdrop of far more worry about the emergence of the far right,
02:55 particularly here in Europe, and what it means for reproductive rights.
02:58 The next country to watch will be Poland,
03:02 because the new Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, who's taken over from the far right Law and Justice Party,
03:08 is looking at overturning those incredible harsh restrictions against reproductive rights.
03:14 And I understand that there are certainly a number of people in the Polish Parliament
03:19 who would be looking at what's happening today in France very closely indeed
03:23 to see whether in fact their country could replicate this historic move.
03:28 And certainly, I mean, it is amazing to think that we're 24 years into the 21st century
03:36 and reproductive rights are not a given in so many countries.
03:42 And if anything, as we've seen in the US, they are indeed fragile.
03:48 And it depends who is in power.
03:50 And so this is why enshrining it into the Constitution is protection for this nation's future generations
03:59 to ensure that women will not experience what their American counterparts are experiencing now.
04:05 Yeah, and can you play up that last bit?
04:07 There were some lawmakers and some people from the public that said
04:11 abortion rights weren't really called into question, the procedure wasn't at risk here in France,
04:18 that we did need to take this extra step to actually put it in the Constitution.
04:23 But I think people were looking across the Atlantic and seeing that we never know what happens next,
04:29 what holds the future in terms of presidential elections, who might be in power.
04:33 Absolutely, and given that the far-right politician Marina Penn is gaining more and more support in recent years,
04:41 of course that's the big concern.
04:42 Having said that, she did vote to accept this amendment because a poll back in 2022,
04:49 taken after the demise of Roe v. Wade, showed that 86% of the French public supported abortion rights.
04:57 So I think electorally she understood that this is something which had the wide support of many French people
05:05 and that it wouldn't serve the political campaign to make a stand against it.
05:10 But you don't know who's coming after someone like Marina Penn, whether in fact the right wing as we see it today in politics
05:18 shifts even further right.
05:19 That's right. So France has inscribed the guaranteed rights to abortion. Let's listen in to the French President.
05:24 It is a momentous day for our Republic. The seal of the Republic is sealing today a long struggle for freedom.
05:35 A struggle made of tears, drama and broken destinies.
05:45 Destinies of the angel-makers Marie-Louise Pillot, who practices abortion in Cherbourg and was guillotined by Vichy.
05:58 A destiny of women deprived of the most intimate of their choice, that to have or not a child.
06:05 Destiny of these women with faces of suffering, suffering of dread, addresses, exchanges, impossible convalescence,
06:18 secrets, suspicion sermons, the risk of losing everything, one's happiness and one's life.
06:26 Destinies of calm young girls and women told by Simone de Beauvoir.
06:33 Destinies with empty cupboards and filled memories of Anierno recalling abortion instruments that are burning her pain.
06:45 Destiny of Marie-Claire Chevalier, raped at 16 and who defended by Gilles Alalimi, had to undergo the trial of Bobine, her own,
06:57 and then that of her mother, her friends. Her name thrown out, her future confiscated.
07:07 Destiny of Catherine Marceline Bernadette, the 343 who dared on the front page of the Nouvelle Observateur
07:17 give some of their light to those who had for too long lived in the shadow of shame.
07:24 Yes, for too many years the destiny of women was sealed by others. Their life captured, their freedom flouted.
07:36 So faced with these suffering and this injustice, there were pioneering women, pioneering in the fight for abortion and the right to emancipation.
07:46 Marie Pelletier, Céline, Nelly Roussel, many others who after the war managed to prize their rights from the patriarchy
07:57 and established as a universal right by de Gaulle in 1944 the authorization of the contraceptive pill.
08:06 In 1967, men of science enlightened humanists who knew what abortion carried by way of intimate tragedy, violence, unbearable loneliness.
08:21 Activists of the women's liberation movement, the movement for freedom of abortion and of planned parenthood,
08:32 creating 1974 with Giselle Halimi and Christiane de Roche, women of commitment and courage like Simone Weil,
08:44 supported by the Prime Minister Jacques Chirac and President Giscard d'Estaing, passed before Parliament the law
08:53 making legal pregnancy termination in January 1975. How many lives were changed thanks to this historic law?
09:04 How many French women, many of whom are no doubt with us today, were able to choose their life, be free?
09:14 How many lives were changed by the Roudian-Touraine laws reimbursing abortion, creating the law of hindrance
09:26 and deleting the distress and extending the time period by the various health ministers?
09:35 Today, it's in the steps of these combatants that we follow humbly.
09:43 Enshrined in our constitution, the guaranteed freedom of having an abortion might have seemed even less necessary a few years ago,
09:59 but the backtracking of our times have made it an urgency throughout the world, including in the biggest democracies, our neighbours in Europe.
10:11 We're seeing the backsliding of the right to abortion, of women's rights, those who deny women the right to love, to choose, to live freely.
10:21 So, because the unthinkable is emerging, we needed to enshrine, to engrave the irreversible.
10:33 That's why on the 8th of March, during the tribute to Gisèle Halimi, I promised to enshrine in our constitution the freedom to have an abortion.
10:46 This sermon is kept because political leaders of all parties have worked in Congo, work built by MPs.
10:58 Liliane Assassi, Aurore Berger, Laurence Cohen, Mathilde Pannot, Laurence Rossignol, Melanie Vogel in particular,
11:06 who called for such an initiative, work undertaken with constant determination by Elisabeth Borne and then Gabrielle Attal,
11:16 Prime Minister, by Éric Dupond-Moretti, Justice Minister, Bérangère Couillard, Aurore Berger, Ministers in charge of gender equality,
11:26 whose culmination was made possible following a dialogue initiated by this government with the National Assembly and the Senate.
11:36 This day has become possible thanks to you.
11:39 It's become possible also thanks to the mobilization of generations of activists, generations defending women's rights,
11:49 who throughout society champion this hope.
11:53 Perhaps also thanks to these young French women who converted the gaze of a father, an uncle, changed a vote
12:02 and instilled a bit of their youth in the oldest constitution in the history of the Republic.
12:10 Is French the who is not tranquil as long as the promise of equality has not been kept for humankind, for the universal?
12:24 Today is not the end of a story. It's the beginning of a struggle.
12:31 France today has become the only country in the world whose constitution explicitly protects the right to have an abortion,
12:44 whatever the circumstance. We'll only rest once this promise has been kept throughout the world.
12:52 We must conduct this struggle on our continent, in our Europe, where the reactionary forces always attack the rights of women
13:01 before attacking the rights of minorities, the oppressed and all freedom.
13:06 That's why I wish the inscription of this guaranteed right to have an abortion in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
13:19 [Applause]
13:37 Because today in our Europe nothing is acquired, everything must be defended beyond Europe.
13:45 We will fight so that this right becomes universal and effective, and we will conduct this fight for all women.
13:53 Several combatants are here at our side who risked and still risk their lives in their country.
14:01 Women of rights where this right doesn't exist, submitted to men to live, to dress, to choose their loves.
14:09 Women of countries where this right no longer exists, where the gag, suspicion and trials have returned.
14:17 We'll fight against obscure ameteurism, seeking revenge, against disinformation, daily obstacles and difficulty of access for citizens
14:30 because it is a universal fight, and this fight is ours, that of women and men.
14:38 And because this fight for the freedom of the body of women overrides all others,
14:45 we will tirelessly act to put an end to violence, abuse affecting women,
14:53 to put an end to prejudice that prevents this violence, these insults that poison.
15:01 We will fight for these women who work more and earn less, the spirit revolted by injustice.
15:08 Act for these women whose daily work, unpaid alimony, make life more difficult for them.
15:18 Act because the progress of women's rights is the progress of human rights.
15:24 [Applause]
15:37 And from this story of tragedy and tears, there remain the tears of joy,
15:44 the activists that the Republic salutes with respect and gratefulness and today see their fight almost over.
15:54 A struggle whose roots run deep.
15:58 These activists of women's rights may perhaps remember the first day of their commitment for the right to abortion.
16:10 The tragedy, the violence that they lived through, a life deeply affected they heard about,
16:18 a conversation turning into a conversion and forever they remember that everything started on that day.
16:26 Some were contemporaneous with the angel makers.
16:33 Today they have become makers of possible, of freedom, of hope.
16:40 Yes, Marianne, our Marianne, is that free woman who represents us all and compels us in memory
16:53 of our mothers and their battle as a matinee for our daughters and their freedom.
17:03 Once the right to abortion has become at last universal, we will remember that everything began on that day,
17:12 the 8th of March, 2024, where France was great because it wanted to be so for all women universally.
17:26 So thank you.
17:28 Vive la République et vive la France.