After the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States to revoke the right to abortion, more than 400 lawyers signed a column in the Journal du Dimanche for the constitutionalization of this right. Anne Bouillon, a lawyer in Nantes, supports this initiative and shares her concerns.
Published in the JDD edition of this Saturday, June 25, the column signed by more than 400 lawyers is alarmed by the decision of the supreme judges of the United States to reconsider the right to abortion in this country and therefore, to let each of the States decide for themselves.
“This decision, a symbol of an unprecedented rollback of freedoms, endangers the safety and health of American women, deplore the signatory lawyers in this forum. It also raises the question of the guarantee of this right in France where nearly 230,000 women have recourse to abortion each year… Nothing is more urgent than to strengthen this right by enshrining it in the Constitution!”
Anne Bouillon, a lawyer in Nantes and known for her fight against violence against women, supports this forum and also calls for the right to abortion to be included in the French Constitution in order to protect it.
Anne Bouillon, what was your first reaction to the Supreme Court’s announcement?
Of consternation and dread. Even if we expected it, we knew that the Supreme Court was going to work on the reform of this judgment. But even then, we hope that won’t happen. I am dismayed like millions of women, dismayed by the fact that Americans are sent back to the worst hours of the female condition, that we still assume the right to control women’s bodies. What we think is dystopia, we all think of the Scarlet Handmaiden (sci-fi novel by Margaret Atwood describing a totalitarian regime led by religion, editor’s note), in reality, of a one way or another, it’s happening and it’s happening now in the United States, one of the largest democracies on our planet.
Women are being denied the right to dispose of their bodies. I collapsed.
Is it important today in France to enshrine the right to abortion in the Constitution?
It seemed absolutely unavoidable to me. I hear voices here and there telling us, again this morning on France Inter, that it wouldn’t be necessary, well it’s unavoidable! Let us remember in 2017, François Fillon, presidential candidate, had indicated that, personally, he was against abortion and he wanted to eliminate the offense of false information. On the internet there are sites that spread false information about abortion. Laurence Rossignol, then Minister of State, had codified this offence. François Fillon had clearly expressed the fact that he would remove this offense. Let us remember how some gynecologists, in 2018, the president of the union of gynecologists, was able to indicate that gynecologists were not there to take life.
It should not be believed that this right is secure in France.
The protest movements against this right, which I think must be inalienable, are still at work, powerful, organized. As Simone de Beauvoir prophetically said a few decades ago: “All it takes is a crisis for women’s rights to be the first to be called into question” so the right to abortion must be protected . To sanctify it, to make it unattainable, it must be constitutionalized.
I call for the promulgation of this law to constitutionalize this right to abortion.
For you, this right to abortion can be called into question?
Of course, he was in Poland not long ago. We know that in Spain it is also precarious. It would be an illusion to believe that the right to abortion is an inalienable right. For or against abortion, it’s a debate that I no longer want to have. It’s over, we had this debate 50 years ago. The right of women to dispose of their bodies is a non-subject. But it is a posture that I take. The reality is that there are still many of them who think that, for reasons of their own, they should decide what I, you, other women, should or should not do with our bodies and that it’s unbearable. So we must protect ourselves against this tendency and this temptation which remain strong and heavy in France today.
They should decide what women should or should not do with their bodies
