Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls)” bellowed throughout Trocadéro Square in Paris, France on Monday, March 4th, as hundreds of Parisians celebrated France becoming the first country to explicitly inscribe access to abortion in its Constitution. France’s historic enshrinement stands as a rebuke to the U.S.’s rollback of reproductive rights and a beacon of hope for women fighting for bodily autonomy around the world.
The U.S. has a multitude of things to learn following France’s constitutional amendment. It has been shown time and time again in the U.S. just how incredibly dangerous and devastating it is to undermine abortion as a right. The World Health Organization found that in countries where abortion is highly restricted legally, only 25% of abortions happen safely. This vote in France needs to pave the way for stronger protection of access to abortion everywhere, sending a message to the world that women’s rights are fundamental rights.
Lawmakers within the French Senate (the upper house of parliament) and the National Assembly (the lower house of parliament) met and passed the historic amendment in an overwhelmingly approved bill, amending Article 34 of the French Constitution to allow “a woman’s guaranteed freedom to have recourse to an abortion.”
“We are sending the message to all women: Your body belongs to you and no one has the right to control it in your stead,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said before the vote. The vote stood 780-72 in favor of the measure, undoubtedly surpassing the three-fifths majority needed to amend the French Constitution. Almost the entire joint session stood in a long-standing ovation following the vote.
Unlike the U.S., the issue of abortion in France is not politically charged or highly divisive. Rather, most French people believe abortion is a basic public health service and a woman’s right. A survey across 29 countries showed France with the second-highest support for legalized abortion in the world, after Sweden. While abortion is broadly legal throughout Europe, governments have started to expand abortion rights even further. Governments have started to expand abortion rights throughout Europe, where the procedure is broadly legal overall.
The catalyst for the amendment was the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, effectively ending nearly 50 years of federal abortion rights in the U.S. This decision, coupled with the enactment of trigger laws in several states like Alabama that almost immediately banned abortion, served as a stark reminder of how no democracy—not even one as large as the U.S.—is immune to the stripping of protected, fundamental rights.
As the U.S. started rolling back abortion rights, President Emmanuel Macron promised that France would ensure the right to abortion was protected in the event of any similar moves to restrict access in the future.
France first legalized abortion in 1975, when female Health Minister Simone Veil successfully pushed through a temporary law decriminalizing abortions. In 2022, the legal limit for abortions was extended from 12 to 14 weeks of pregnancy, following anger that French women often found themselves forced to travel abroad for the procedure.
Throughout the recent legislative session, lawmakers paid tribute to Veil. Senator Laurence Rossignol, a former women’s rights minister, said “We have followed in your footsteps and like you, we succeeded.” Addressing more conservative politicians, like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, Rossignol stressed that French feminists would fight against “those who resist” on the international stage.
The amendment was officially inscribed in the Constitution on Friday, March 8th, International Women’s Day, during a ceremony in central Paris that was open to the public. At the ceremony, Macron declared, “Today is not the end of the story but the start of a fight.” Drawing cheers from the crowd in Paris, Macron continued to explain that he hopes to enshrine that guaranteed freedom to abortion in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
The amendment intrinsically reshapes the mold of France’s fundamental text which was written by men, for men, just as every other major constitution worldwide. Around the world, the narrative needs to be dismantled, destroyed, and rewritten to legally declare that women exist as greater beings beyond the role declaration of “breeders and caretakers” by constitutions, as author Ruth Rubio-Martin points out.
It was Simone de Beauvoir, a French feminist intellectual, who said that women’s rights were the first freedoms to be attacked. As women’s groups and defenders of abortion and other sexual and reproductive rights in the U.S. are increasingly disillusioned by the U.S. government, France’s recent success sends a small message of hope and solidarity around the world. The unwavering dedication, passion, and commitment exhibited by feminists in France shows that nothing is impossible when you mobilize a community.
Rania Jones ’27 (rjones@college.harvard.edu) reads Simone de Beauvoir for fun.