There was little doubt that the French parliament would reach a majority on Monday, when it gathered in a special session to enshrine the right to abortion into its constitution. Even so, it was an electric moment. At the Palace of Versailles, big enough to host the 925 MPs and senators eligible to vote, the scene was set to the solemn drumming of the republican guard.
Broadcast live on every news channel and beamed on to a giant screen at the Paris Trocadero, opposite the Eiffel Tower, French citizens watched as French National Assembly President Yael Braun-Pivet — the assembly’s first female president — looking calm and focused, walked toward the packed chamber to declare the hearing open.
Passing republican guards in full regalia, sabers drawn, forming a guard of honor, there was total silence as she made her entrance to make history, as France became the world’s first country to guarantee women’s rights to abortion.
What is remarkable in France’s bold move to protect a woman’s right to choose is that there are few places in the world where access to abortion is less under threat. No French political party opposes it or has made moves to restrict access — not even the far right National Rally, whose leader, Marine Le Pen, supported the proposal to enshrine it in the constitution.
“It will be President [Emmanuel] Macron’s only victory in his 10 years of power,” she sneered as she arrived in Versailles.
However, what happened in the US, where 24 states and territories have rescinded fully or partly the right to abortion, rang alarm bells for the French political class.
With the support of Macron, there was widespread political consensus to make abortion rights in France much more difficult to tamper with. Mathilde Panot, an MP from the hard-left party France Unbowed, who first proposed the move, told the chamber it was “a promise … for all women fighting [for abortion rights] everywhere in the world.”
“France is at the avant-garde, it is in its place,” Braun-Pivet said.
It is certainly true that France has a proud feminist past: During the French Revolution, the pioneer Olympe de Gouges wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, in which she demanded equal rights for women, including that the right to divorce, be written in the constitution of 1791.
She also demanded that children born out of wedlock be given the same rights as legitimate children.
However, in more recent history, France proved particularly slow to give women the right to vote. Then-French president Charles de Gaulle only made it legal in 1944, a quarter of a century after Britain.
France’s rekindling of its glorious feminist tradition is seen by some as an example of Macron’s easy politicking, but it is also viewed by many more as an effort to unite the country around what an overwhelming majority of French people consider to be a just and important cause.
A 2022 poll showed that 86 percent were in favor of enshrining the right to an abortion in the constitution.
Many in France now hope that other European countries would follow suit and that it has set an important precedent — that Europe would not go the same way as the US. Could this inspire the liberal Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, whose country has abortion banned (except in cases of rape, incest or danger to life)?
What is clear is that French have an undeniable talent for staging historic moments. Just before 7pm on Monday, Braun-Pivet delivered the results: “780 votes in favor, 72 votes against.”
While legislators took to their feet to applaud the stunning result, cheers of thousands of Parisians could be heard at the Trocadero, and the Eiffel Tower started glittering as four words, “mon corps mon choix” (“my body my choice”), appeared on it in giant letters.
Groups of feminists who first championed the fight for abortion more than 50 years ago cheered and danced in sheer jubilation. This vote was very much their triumph, too. It was a moment of rare unity, the kind that a country like France is craving, amid a much-fragmented political landscape and regular bouts of social unrest.
“French pride, universal message,” Macron posted on X, inviting the public to attend, for the first time in France’s history, the sealing ceremony of the constitutional revision midday today, in front of the French Ministry of Justice on Place Vendome.
The wax seal is to aptly feature the face of the beautiful Marianne, the French republic’s symbol. A street party is to follow to celebrate “the culmination of a collective fight.”
For women elsewhere in the world, the fight continues.
Agnes Poirier is a political commentator, writer and critic.
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