As soon as the news of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade was announced on June 24, French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted his outrage and concern.
Monsieur le Président expressed solidarity with American women, who he feels have been deprived of a “fundamental right” to eliminate the child they are carrying.
The next day Aurore Bergé, president of the Renaissance (RE) parliamentary group in the French National Assembly, announced plans to introduce a bill that would enshrine the right to abortion in the very Constitution of the French Republic.
Politicians responded enthusiastically, and Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne (TDP) stated in a tweet that “the government will strongly support this bill.”
For her part, Mathilde Panot, chairwoman of the far-left party La France Insoumise (FI), announced that the coalition recently formed by the founder and leader of his party Jean-Luc Mélenchon (Nouvelle Union populaire écologique et sociale), established on May 1 by the Left and the Greens, would also work on a similar bill to this effect.
Things are the same on the right: president of the Rassemblement National Jordan Bardella published a post on Twitter stating that “no serious political movement in France questions the Veil law,” referring to former Health Minister Simone Veil, who made abortion legal in France in 1975.
As for public opinion, a study conducted in April 2021 for the Women’s Foundation shows that the majority of French people, about 93 percent, say they are convinced of women’s right to access abortion, while 81 percent would even believe that such access should be further improved, and it is precisely with this report that the generalist media across the Alps and beyond are waving.
It remains to be added that France has a chilling bioethics law, which iFamNews has covered on numerous occasions, in which elective abortion finds wide scope and virtually unlimited application. No surprise, then, at the hysterical reaction opposed to the US ruling.