In a rare joint session on the Palace of Versailles on Monday, lawmakers voted 780 to 72 to enshrine abortion access within the structure, making France the primary country on the earth to accomplish that.
While abortion is already legal in France, the parliament acted in response to the US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 in addition to the rightward political swing in countries around the globe. The French government desired to shore up its existing laws ahead of any potential gains by the political right in France’s next presidential election in 2027, although not one of the political parties are advocating an end to abortion.
The vote easily exceeded the brink of three-fifths of the senators and deputies needed to amend the structure, which now states there may be a “guaranteed freedom” to abortion in France. While many individuals cheered the choice, pro-life voices throughout the country’s small evangelical population (making up about 1 percent of the population) expressed concern. A bunch of around 2,500 demonstrators, rallied by the organizers of the annual Marche pour la Vie (March for Life), gathered in Versailles on Monday as members of parliament arrived for the vote.
“I feel it is de facto vital to witness that many French don’t agree with the inscription of abortion within the structure,” said Nicolas Tardy-Joubert, president of Marche pour la Vie. “This [demonstration] is essential to showing that there may be another mindset to public life in our country. … We should protect life, and we cannot add a guaranteed liberty in our structure to kill any person.”
Tardy-Joubert noted that while it was a day of sorrow, “it must also be a day for hope, because we’d like to get up the concerns and have a tendency the hurts. … It is a long-term process.”
In his speech before the historic vote, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal hailed the addition to the structure as a second victory for Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor and French health minister who championed the 1975 law that legalized abortion in France, generally known as the Veil Act.
Yet a statement by the National Council of Evangelicals in France (CNEF) noted that the Veil Act viewed abortion as a final resort: “Exception was to be the foundational principle. Distress was to be the criterion.” It identified that Veil warned abortion needs to be of an “exceptional nature” in order that society wouldn’t appear to encourage it, but reasonably dissuade it.
But now, the statement noted, “Guaranteed freedom has grow to be the foundational principle. The criterion of distress has been faraway from the law.”
The Evangelical Protestant Committee for Human Dignity (CPDH) similarly believes that the move makes abortion appear to be the federal government’s de facto solution for girls facing unplanned pregnancies.
“This isolation within the face of the abortion decision is a type of abandonment by the general public authorities, within the face of the distress a girl may experience at a fragile moment in her life, without providing her with any alternative aside from to place an end to the life she carries inside her,” the group said in a statement. “The freedom we provide can also be the support we deprive her of.”
CPDH further noted that Monday’s vote, wherein voluntary termination of life became certainly one of the values of the Republic, shall be viewed as “a political step forward for President [Emmanuel] Macron—one he naturally welcomes—but in addition an actual ethical setback.”
Marjorie Legendre, a pastor, seminary professor of ethics and spirituality, and member of the Commission d’Éthique Protestante Évangelique (CEPE), senses that the inclusion of abortion within the structure is a wake-up call for French evangelicals. Rather than simply opposing abortion privately, now they’re speaking about it more openly within the church and in society.
Normally, the federal government holds listening tours and invites input and public debate with regards to big issues, but that didn’t occur with the choice to constitutionalize abortion. Erwan Cloarec, president of CNEF, said that though the federal government holds meetings together with his organization and other religious groups on other topics, it didn’t invite input on this one. He said that, to his knowledge, the federal government didn’t even give a hearing for the Catholic church, which still holds historical sway in France. Despite this, “it’s still our job to elucidate what we consider.”
Legendre—speaking from her personal opinion reasonably than as an institutional representative—called attention to the best way the federal government is prioritizing a girl’s right to decide on over the rights of kids.
“I actually have the impression that we’re putting a lot emphasis on women’s rights that we’re forgetting the appropriate of the unborn child,” Legendre said. “But who’s the weakest within the story? Christians are called to defend the weakest. I’m not saying that the rights of ladies—who might also be in a fragile situation—and the rights of the unborn child needs to be pitted against one another, but there may be a disproportion in favor of ladies’s rights alone.”
While enshrining abortion rights within the structure doesn’t bring any immediate changes in practice, as laws protecting abortion are already in place, some evangelicals are concerned that it could impact other types of liberty. For example, CNEF said in its statement, “Evangelical Protestants of France call on the federal government to make sure that women who so wish are offered the liberty and means to maintain their child or to entrust their child to another person.”
Some also worry that the constitutional change could impinge on medical professionals’ right to decide on to not perform procedures that go against their conscience. Legendre said she doesn’t think the conscience clause is legally under threat because it is an element of the French human rights declaration. But she’s concerned that, in practice, doctors or nurses could face pressure to perform abortions, which ultimately weaken the liberty of conscience clause.
While Christians within the West may view what is occurring in France as a cautionary tale, Cloarec noted that it is important to contemplate the distinct cultural and historical contexts inside each country.
“Our posture is to attempt to be constructive and credible, to dialogue with the country’s authorities without being confrontational, aware of living in a secularized context but without giving up on saying what we consider,” Cloarec said. Ultimately, “we want to be the church of Jesus Christ. That is to say, loving and welcoming to all.”
As for what’s next, Luc Olekhnovitch, president of the CEPE and a pastor for 30 years, said he’s glad CNEF published a press release in order that there’s a public-facing statement. Beyond that, churches have work to do. “The cultural battle is lost on this issue,” he said. “On the opposite hand, we mustn’t cut off the cultural battle within the churches—the battle to respect life itself, from birth to death.”
According to Marche pour la Vie’s Tardy-Joubert, there are still opportunities to forestall abortions from happening. He noted that, based on a 2020 study by the pro-life group Alliance Vita, 88 percent of French people want to grasp the causes and consequences of abortion, which number about 200,000 a yr within the country.
“So we expect the [members of parliament] and senators should involve themselves in making inquiries to raised understand why we’ve so many abortions and what the implications are by way of public health, by way of demography, by way of economics,” he said. “The goal to cut back abortion by half in France, for instance, is feasible if we would like to have the politics put in place.”
This is perhaps welcomed even by those without ethical reasons to wish for a drop in abortion numbers. Like in lots of parts of the world, France is facing a rapidly decreasing birthrate that can impact the country’s workforce and tax its social welfare system: 2023 saw the lowest variety of births within the country since 1946.
Legendre sees a job for churches in combating a “culture of death” with a prophetic voice for a “culture of life.” She said this can occur “through the teaching of young people, through teaching adults with aging parents, and so forth. There is room to maneuver in our communities on this area. And, on this sense, we will be models and witnesses inside society of the culture of life.”
She added: “We have every reason to have a culture of life: We worship the living God, the God of life, the risen Christ! We have every reason to rejoice life, to savor life, to respect life: It’s as much as us to be models and witnesses of life, from its starting to its end.”
