The French Church has voiced alarm at President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement that France would add the right to abortion into its constitution next year.
The Archbishop of Rennes Pierre d’Ornellas, the French bishops’ spokesman on bioethics, criticised Macron for submitting his proposal to a joint session of the National Assembly and the Senate, rather than a popular referendum.
France would probably be the only country in the world to make abortion a constitutional right, he said, and this could infringe on legal free speech by making arguments against abortion unconstitutional.
He noted that some other countries have reduced the number of abortions without such an amendment, while France has seen its abortion rate rise. There were about 234,300 abortions in France last year compared to 104,000 in neighbouring – and more populous – Germany
“This looks like an admission of weakness on our ability to calmly debate the subject,” the archbishop told Vatican Radio. “We are a society of social relations,” he said, so all must “take care of the most fragile”.
Macron announced on 29 October that the draft law would receive cabinet approval by the end of the year and become a constitutional right in 2024.
A government information service cited the US revocation of the federal right to abortion last year, its prohibition in Malta, restrictions in Poland and Hungary and the rejection of the constitutional amendment by the French Senate last year as reasons for the move.
National Assembly members introduced six draft laws on a constitutional guarantee last year. But ordinary parliamentary procedure, approved by a referendum, “had few chances of reaching its goal” since no amendment to the 1958 constitution had succeeded this way, the government added.
The Bishop of Bayonne Marc Aillet said France was “incapable of protecting its citizens against this violence and that now wants to include in the constitution the already trivialised right to kill unborn children”.
In early 2024, the government also plans to change French law to allow assisted suicide and euthanasia. This has prompted 15 public figures, including the heads of the Catholic, Muslim and Jewish communities, to write a joint letter of opposition.
“Despite our differences, for all of us, assisted suicide and euthanasia touch on a founding prohibition, that of causing death, and legalising them would weaken this prohibition,” they said. “We are concerned about the risk of abusing a state of weakness.”
In a book on the issue published last month, 13 religious leaders gave nuanced explanations to their stand in a growing public debate.
“We have been listened to on several occasions…but each time in short formats, ill-suited to this serious subject, which we cannot respond to in a few minutes,” wrote Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort of Reims, president of the French bishops’ conference.
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