Europe 1 with AFP 6:28 p.m., January 22, 2023
Behind a head banner proclaiming that we must "accompany death, not program it", thousands of demonstrators marched this Sunday in Paris against the inclusion of the right to abortion in the Constitution.
This gathering is organized every year on a national scale around the anniversary of the Veil law.
"Euthanasia, hypocrite's oath": a few thousand people demonstrated in Paris on Sunday against the possible legalization of "active assistance in dying" and the inclusion of the right to abortion in the Constitution, noted a journalist from the AFP.
Behind a head banner proclaiming that we must "accompany death, not program it", the participants in this 17th "March for life" - 20,000 according to the organizers - joined the Invalides in the afternoon from Montparnasse.
Today, 20,000 Defenders of Life mobilized in Paris to oppose the constitutionalization of abortion and the legalization of euthanasia! #MPLV2023pic.twitter.com/gyLwtcXfyy
— March For Life (@MarchePourLaVie) January 22, 2023
The national demonstration is organized each year around the anniversary of the Veil law relating to voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion), promulgated on January 17, 1975. It is organized by activists from the conservative Catholic ranks.
This year, the organizers highlighted the theme of the end of life, the subject of a debate with a view to a possible evolution of the legal framework, even more so than that of abortion.
"The ban on killing must remain fundamental"
“We oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide,” said the president of the March for Life, Nicolas Tardy-Joubert, before the demonstration.
"While 26 French departments are deprived of palliative care units, we believe that the political priority must be given there", he added, stressing that "the ban on killing must remain fundamental".
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In the colorful procession of a few flags with fleur-de-lis or bearing the Sacred Heart had taken place many young people, others older, sometimes with their families.
"We fight for the beauty of life," Hermine Gousseau, 19, a carer for the elderly from Lyon, told AFP, waving a large French flag in the cold wind.
"Defend life from conception until natural death"
Alexis Gaudillère, a 24-year-old student, came to "defend life from conception to natural death" and "to make society understand that there are alternatives to this culture of death disseminated by the government".
"Inevitably, we will push the old people who are on hospital beds or in nursing homes" to ask to die, letting them think that they are "burdens for everyone", fears Benoît, a 60-year-old Parisian years, who did not want to give his name.
The organizers took advantage of the march to express their opposition to the inclusion of abortion in the Constitution, voted by the deputies in November but which will have to obtain the approval of the Senate to be effective.