By Catholic Herald (UK) staff, March 4, 2024

France has chosen to enshrine abortion as a constitutional right, thereby becoming the only country in the world to use its most fundamental principles of national law to guarantee the right to terminate a pregnancy up to 14 weeks.

Lawmakers from both houses of the French Parliament voted 780 to 72 in favour of the monumental change, easily surpassing the three-fifths majority needed to amend the French Constitution.

The amendment declares abortion to be a “guaranteed freedom” underpinned by the French Parliament’s laws. It means, the New York Times reports, that future governments will not be able to “drastically modify” current laws funding abortion for women who seek it, up to 14 weeks into their pregnancies, according to the French justice minister, Éric Dupond-Moretti.

Earlier on March 4, the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV) in a statement reiterated the position taken by the French bishops throughout the lead-up to the vote, reports Crux. It highlighted that no one is entitled to take a human life, and stressed the need to protect the most vulnerable while bettering social conditions.

The Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV) in their Monday statement insisted that “in the era of universal human rights, there cannot be a ‘right’ to taking a human life”.

On 29 Feb., the French Bishops’ Conference issued a statement insisting that “abortion, which remains an attack on life from the beginning, cannot be seen exclusively from the perspective of women’s rights”.

“It is regretted that the debate did not mention the measures of support for those who wish to keep their child,” the bishops said.

The measure had already been passed by the upper and lower houses of the French Parliament, but final approval by parliament at the 4 March joint session in the Palace of Versailles was needed to effect constitutional change.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who is Catholic, has previously pledged to make a woman’s freedom to choose an abortion “irreversible”, and including the right to abortion in the constitution is seen as not only a follow up on that promise, but also as a way of protecting the law that decriminalised abortion in France in 1975.

CNN News argues that the constitutional changes is the “culmination of an effort that began in direct response to the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade”.

The PAV in their Monday statement insisted that “in the era of universal human rights, there cannot be a ‘right’ to taking a human life”.

All governments and religious traditions, they said, must “do their best so that at this stage in history, the protection of life becomes an absolute priority, with concrete steps in favour of peace and social justice and with effective measures for a universal access to resources, education and healthcare”.

“The particular life situations and difficult and dramatic contexts of our time must be faced with the tools of a legal civilisation that looks first of all to the protection of the weakest and most vulnerable,” the academy said.

Protection of life, they added, ought to be humanity’s “first objective”, and is something that can only develop in a world free of conflict and with the fields of science, technology, and industry serving both “the human person and brotherhood.”

Quoting Pope Francis, the academy said that “the defence of life is not an ideology” for the Catholic Church, rather “it is a reality, a human reality that involves all Christians, precisely because they are Christian and because they are human”.

Quoting Pope Francis, the academy said that “the defence of life is not an ideology” for the Catholic Church, rather “it is a reality, a human reality that involves all Christians, precisely because they are Christian and because they are human”.

“It is about acting on the cultural and educative level to pass on to future generations the attitude of solidarity, of care, of welcome, knowing well that the culture of life is not the exclusive heritage of Christians, but it belongs to all those who, working to build fraternal relations, recognise the value of every single person, even the fragile and suffering,” they said.

In the recently released The Tyranny of the Banal, author David Deane, a professor of Theology at the Atlantic School of Theology in the US, discusses the challenges faced by Catholics in explaining and living the Catholic Faith in a culture so deeply rooted in secular liberalism. He devotes a chapter to “Abortion and the Tyranny of the Res Eligens [choosing things]”, in which he critiques Catholic attempts to “win arguments” about abortion with secularists.

“I understand why Catholics try to appeal to things that will ‘win’ arguments with secular liberals, after all, there are millions of lives at stake,” he tells the Catholic World Report in an interview. “But I lament that we’ve lost contact with the basis for the opposition to abortion held by Christians for much of Christian history.”

He explains how this opposition “is ground in an understanding of reality that sees the real presence of the Holy Spirit as the basis of human dignity, while “the souls of the unborn are sites for the presence of the Holy Spirit”.

In essence, he argues, the “Holy Spirit, God, is present, ontologically, in the unborn”.

“Our acts of violence against them are literal assaults on the real presence of God,” Deane says. “This is why abortion is unthinkable.”

Following the French vote, the Eiffel Tower was lit up with the words Mon corps mon choix – “My body my choice”.

This article first appeared HERE.