Paris (AFP)

Gatherings marked Saturday in Paris and several cities the international day for the right to abortion, while in "2018, 47,000 women died in the world as a result of a clandestine abortion," according to the Family Planning.

A hundred or so demonstrators, mostly women, gathered in front of the Tenon Hospital in Paris took the direction of the Gare du Nord in the early afternoon with fanfare, with the musicians of the "muses tanguent", noted a journalist from AFP.

In Bordeaux, some 300 defenders of abortion, led by a "batucada (set of percussion, editor's note) feminist", parade at the head of a procession that also included about 300 "yellow vests".

Meetings were also to be held in Lille, Marseille, Nantes, Toulouse and Tours.

The IVG Tenon center collective, the only one located in a hospital in the 20th arrondissement, asked during the Paris rally "the creation of a dedicated hospital doctor practice", to put an end to the "turnover of the doctors who are hired the proper functioning of the center and calls into question the right of women to abort ".

The gynecologist Danièle Gaudry, one of the organizers of the Paris event and activist family planning, recalled the closure since 2012 of 60 centers practicing abortions. "We ask that the abortion be considered as a medical act made obligatorily, and not left to the choice of the hospital," she explained to AFP.

"Public hospitals are all supposed to practice abortions according to the law, but some prefer to practice a science more noble or who pays more, others believe that an establishment that practices abortion for a given region, that is enough ... all this to the detriment of women, "she says.

"There are flagrant territorial disparities, and in Paris, which carries a quarter of abortions in France, centers are overwhelmed," she says.

According to a survey of the regional health agencies (ARS) the average time in France between the request of the woman and the abortion is of 7.4 days at the national level but varies from 3 to 11 days according to the regions, always on average.

The study points out that if there are no "white areas", there are "tense" territories in the majority of regions.

In the wake of Health Minister Agnès Buzyn's announcement of measures to reinforce the "fundamental right" to abortion, Bordeaux protesters, mainly women, marched to the rhythm of the percussions with signs ("IVG c "is sacred", "the law Veil, we keep watch" etc.) and slogans ("abortion is a right, fundamentalists outlaw").

For Catherine and Florence, from La Maison des femmes, the right to abortion is "a fragile right, which suffered small snacks because of political or religious pressure and lack of resources."

"We ask that the law be removed from the law for a doctor to refuse an abortion by conscience clause," said Rosa Ould Ameziane of the League of Human Rights.

© 2019 AFP