The Senate, dominated by the right-wing opposition, unsurprisingly rejected a bill on Wednesday to extend the legal deadline for abortion from 12 to 14 weeks.

The motion was voted by 201 votes for (LR and centrists), and 142 votes against (PS, RDPI with a majority En Marche, CRCE with a communist majority, RDSE with a radical majority, Independents, Ecologists).

The Senate, dominated by the right-wing opposition, unsurprisingly rejected on Wednesday a bill to extend the legal deadline for abortion, which should nevertheless "continue on its way", as the Secretary of State wished. Adrien Taquet.

The text "aimed at strengthening the right to abortion" plans to extend the legal period of access to abortion from 12 to 14 weeks of pregnancy (16 weeks of amenorrhea) to respond to a lack of practitioners and the gradual closure of abortion centers.

A new entry on the agenda

Already voted in first reading by the deputies, it was placed on the agenda of the Senate by the PS group with the aim of advancing the parliamentary shuttle "so that the text succeeds".

To the regret of the majority of groups, the upper house cut short the discussion by voting a motion to reject the text as a whole, defended by Corinne Imbert, on behalf of the Les Républicains group.

The motion was voted by 201 votes for (LR and centrists), and 142 votes against (PS, RDPI with a majority En Marche, CRCE with a communist majority, RDSE with a radical majority, Independents, Ecologists).

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"Even if the discussion is cut short, it is essential that the bill continues its path," said the Secretary of State for Children and Families.

"Regardless of political opinions, we must move forward calmly while respecting each other's convictions," he added.

The LREM group of deputies has already announced its desire to put it back on the Assembly's agenda.

Carried by the non-attached Member of Parliament Albane Gaillot (ex-EDS), it had obtained broad support from LREM at first reading.

In the Senate, the text was carried by Laurence Rossignol, for whom "it is a question of responding to situations certainly limited by their number, but unacceptable on the social level as medical".

"Over the past 15 years, the number of establishments carrying out abortions has decreased by 22%," she stressed, also pleading for "structural measures".

"A fundamental achievement" 

According to data from 2017, "only 5% of voluntary terminations of pregnancy were carried out in the last two weeks of the legal period of twelve weeks", argued Corinne Imbert to oppose the text.

This opposition "should in no way be seen as calling into question the Veil law", she said.

Stressing that "the right to abortion is a fundamental achievement for women", she considered that "this point of balance (...) must be protected so as not to distort what constitutes the very essence of the right to abortion, an exception, a last resort for dead-end situations ".

Seized by the government, the National Consultative Ethics Committee (CCNE) estimated, in mid-December, that "there is no ethical objection to extending the period of access to abortion" by two weeks .

Some 1,500 to 2,000 women go abroad to have an abortion each year - mainly in the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom - because they have exceeded the legal deadline in France, according to CCNE.

In these countries, the legal deadline is set beyond 16 weeks.

According to sources, this figure varies "between 1,000 and 4,000 women," said Xavier Iacovelli (RDPI).

The conscience clause is debated

In addition to the extension of the legal deadline, the bill removes the conscience clause specific to abortion, another point that is debated.

The CCNE itself has said itself in favor of the "double clause", which "underlines the singularity of the medical act represented by abortion".

To address the issues of access to abortion, the bill still authorizes midwives to perform surgical abortions until the end of the tenth week of pregnancy, a provision already introduced, under conditions and on an experimental basis. , in the Social Security financing law for 2021. The National Council of the Order of Midwives is in favor, but the measure also meets with opposition.

The anti-abortion association Alliance Vita immediately welcomed in a press release the rejection of the bill, described as "unjust for women and society".