France becomes the first country to include the right to abortion in its constitution

(CNN) — France on Monday became the first country in the world to enshrine the right to abortion in its constitution, the culmination of an effort that began as a direct response to the United States Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

MPs in both houses of the French Parliament voted 780 in favor of the measure and 72 against, easily exceeding the three-fifths majority required to amend the French Constitution.

Monday’s vote, held during a special meeting of lawmakers at the Palace of Versailles, southwest of Paris, was the final step in the legislative process. Earlier this year the French Senate and National Assembly approved the amendment by overwhelming majorities.

The amendment establishes that there is a “guaranteed freedom” of abortion in France. Some groups and lawmakers had called for stronger language to explicitly call abortion a “right.”

Lawmakers hailed the move as a historic way for France to send a clear signal of support for reproductive rights, at a time when abortion is under threat in the United States as well as in parts of Europe such as Hungary, where There are far right parties and they have come to power.

Prime Minister Gabriel Atal announced before the vote that lawmakers owed a “moral debt” to women who had been forced to endure illegal abortions in the past.

“Most of all, we are sending a message to all women: Your body is yours,” Atal said.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the government would hold a formal ceremony to celebrate the approval of the amendment on International Women’s Day on Friday.

France legalized abortion for the first time in 1975, after a campaign led by then-Health Minister Simone Weil, an Auschwitz survivor who became one of the country’s best-known feminist symbols.

While abortion in American politics is a highly controversial issue that often divides the parties, in France it enjoys widespread support. Many lawmakers who voted against the amendment did so not because they opposed abortion, but because they considered the measure unnecessary given the widespread support for reproductive rights.

The approval of the measure is a clear victory for the French left, which has been pushing for years for the right to abortion to be guaranteed in the constitution. Before 2022, the government of President Emmanuel Macron, as current opponents of the amendment, argued that the measure was unnecessary.

However, in 2022, when the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade and left it to the states to decide the issue individually, France was inspired to take action.

Before the debate began in the National Assembly in January, French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti had previously said that history was full of other examples in which “fundamental rights” were deemed safe, but were later abolished, “As we have been reminded of the recent US Supreme Court decision.”

He said, “We now have irrefutable evidence that no democracy, even the largest of them, is untouched.”

The vote marks the 25th time the French government has amended its constitution since the establishment of the Fifth Republic in 1958.

The Catholic Church was one of the few groups to declare opposition to the amendment. The Pontifical Academy for Life, the Vatican body that deals with issues related to bioethics, said in a statement that “in the age of universal human rights, there can be no ‘right’ to take human life.”

A conference of French bishops on Thursday also reiterated the church’s opposition to abortion ahead of the vote.

CNN’s Joseph Ataman and Christopher Lamb contributed to this report.