The two chambers of the French Parliament meet this Monday in an extraordinary joint session, at the Palace of Versailles, to include the right to abortion in the Constitution. This is a historic decision, a milestone in the feminist struggle, which has no precedent at the international level.
The 925 deputies and senators have been summoned by President Emmanuel Macron, who will not be present as a sign of respect for the division of powers. Congress – the session of the two chambers – is a special body of the Republic for certain acts and decisions. The amendment to the Constitution requires a three-fifths majority of parliamentarians, a threshold that is guaranteed because the National Assembly and the Senate already easily reached it when they voted on the text.
The session will take place in a large chamber built in 1875 in the palace built by Louis XIV, the Sun King. The room is sumptuous, with numerous monarchical references. Since the Fifth Republic began in 1958, all constitutional revisions have been adopted by Congress in Versailles. The place is also used for the president’s rare speeches to parliamentarians.
The meeting will be chaired by the president of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet. The Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, will be the first to speak to defend the inscription of the voluntary interruption of pregnancy in the Magna Carta. Then the spokespersons for all the groups represented in the chambers will intervene.
The constitutional modification is very brief, but important, since it protects the right and makes it very difficult for a Government opposed to abortion to approve a law in the future that would declare it illegal. “The law determines the conditions under which the freedom guaranteed to women to resort to voluntary interruption of pregnancy is exercised,” says the text added to article 34 of the Constitution.
The right to abortion has existed in France since January 17, 1975, called the “Simone Veil law”, during the presidency of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.
