Hacker News Reader

Comment by yodsanklai | Hacker News Reader

Why not, but abortion in France wasn't threatened in any way. It seems to me like a marketing coup from far-left parties who are utterly powerless when it comes to economic policies.

Also I'm not sure what's the extent of this right. In France, AFIU in normal circumstances, you can't legally abort after 14 weeks. Is that challenged by this new constitutional rule?

EDIT: even though Macron ultimately proposed this, it was initiated by a far-left representative, Mathilde Panot. Her party, LFI, advertises this as their own victory.

https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/ivg-dans-la-constitution-math...

> Mathilde Panot, présidente du groupe La France insoumise à l'Assemblée nationale, a été à l'initiative de la proposition de loi constitutionnelle pour garantir le droit à l'IVG.

View on HN

The idea that roe v wade could've been under threat was considered laughably implausible until it wasn't.

Securing these de facto rights and transforming them into de jure rights makes a lot of sense to me, in light of that.

France isn't the US. Abortion has always been a sensitive topic in the US, not at all in France.

france isn't us, but we've seen how dangerous it is, instead of hoping to not get in this situation ever, why not engrave this in constitution so that changing it again would be extremely hard?

Some people don't like the French solution precisely because it is very hard to reverse it now. Downplaying the risk of a French, or European, version of throwing out Roe v. Wade is the easiest way to keep that particular door open.

And pretending that not to be the case, well, I feel insulted by being played for an idiot.

Abortion was illegal in France until 1975. It was legalized by the legislature, and the challenge to the law went up to the Court of Cassation, which upheld the law ruling that the government can properly regulate abortion (which includes permitting it up to 12 weeks, as the 1975 law did).

Two years earlier, the US Supreme Court had struck down any state regulation of abortion prior to viability (around 22-24) weeks. Effectively, it imposed an abortion regime far broader than France’s by judicial fiat.

To badly quote Simone de Beauvoir: "One political, religious or economic crisis will be enough to challenge women's rights, our rights. Throughout your life, you must remain vigilant". GP is right that things seem unthinkable do not stay unthinkable for eternity.

Abortion was sensitive in France when it was voted in the early 70ies.

Few people in France oppose abortion laws as they are today, but the abortion restrictions are quite different compared to the US. E.g. abortion time limit in France are much shorter in "usual" cases, ~3.5 months. It was 3 month until quite recently, and that extension was controversial.

[edit] controversial, but nowhere near as controversial as abortion is in the US. I wonder how controversial extension to 2nd or 3rd trimester would be in France. Those later-terms are legal only under exceptions in France (rape, danger to the mother, etc.).

France is more and more influenced by US politics and cultural struggles even if they rarely translate to the French situation

It was already the law of the land (not hanging by a thread on a supreme court decision) [0]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_Act

Why make things up and assume when you could spend the time you took to write your comment to read the facts?

> from far-left parties

No. Emmanuel Macron, the president, fairly right-sided, pushed it and then everybody welcomed it except some people at the right.

Now of course he could use something good for his image, he pretty much pissed most people a few months ago with how he used every non democratic ways he could to push his retirement reform despite a majority of people being against it (including people mostly agreeing with the content of this reform, but not comfortable with how he handled it).

Actually far-left sided parties are vanishingly small and wouldn't have the power to push something like this.

> who are utterly powerless when it comes to economic policies

Off-topic and not needed here.

Edit to answer the edit: La France Insoumise is hardly far left. It is roughly between le parti socialiste which had almost vanished two years ago, and le parti communiste, itself before Lutte Ouvrière and the NPA. I believe "far" is synonymous with "ideas I really don't like" and better avoided anyway. It doesn't do any good, let's properly reject bad ideas with proper arguments instead.

>> who are utterly powerless when it comes to economic policies

>Off-topic and not needed here.

French politics is off-topic in a thread on French politics?

"politics" is very broad. Should I mention Bézier curves when discussing instruction sets just because both are related to computer science, without any other connection?

This inflammatory gratuitous hot take without any evidence to prove it on a subject unrelated to the discussion at hand (far left parties are not especially more related to this new constitutional abortion right than any other party) just doesn't belong here and will probably not lead to interesting discussions. Whether it is true or not.

> Emmanuel Macron, the president, fairly right-sided, pushed it and then everybody welcomed it except some people at the right.

LFI (france far left party) wants to call this "Loi Panot" and claim the victory. Panot is the LFI representative who has initiated this law. Macron eventually thought it would be good to surf this wave.

> Dans une publication partagée sur X, le groupe parlementaire a réalisé un montage illustrant Mathilde Panot, la cheffe de file des Insoumis, aux côtés de Simone Veil, icône de la lutte contre la discrimination des femmes en France. « On l'a fait ! » illustre l'image avec « #LoiPanot ».

Okay, LFI pushed it. LFI has its issues but is hardly far left, see my edit. It's just one of the bigger left parties.

Also see, you mentioned "far left parties". That felt undocumented, and looked like a platitude. It's one party, for starters. Hand wavy statements will just gather evasive and inaccurate answers.

To be honest, I initially imagined you were not French and making undocumented claims on French politics, I now understand you are French (you stated it).

In the States also about anything which is not republican is getting called "far left" so calling FI like that might be a simple mater of habit.

Far left parties aren't represented in the parliement. In fact, one of them only partakes in elections for executive power.

How to spot far-left: they want to go beyond representative democracy: direct democracy and/or autogestion are their desired end goal. They want to remove executive power (no mayor or president by default), and their view on legislative power differ too much to matter

LFI '6th republic' still is a representative republic, with a more participative glow than the 5th, but is basically the same. They are pro-constitutionalists (basically it mean they will respect the judicial power), want to weaken the executive power but not remove it, to go back to a more northern European kind of democracy.

Far right is basically antidemocracy. That can have different form, recently in France, attacks on elected officials, or on judges.

I'm not sharing any personal views on LFI. But they are classified as far-left and they do claim this victory. It's all over French news. Not sure what your arguing against.

From [1] > Mathilde Panot (French pronunciation: [matild pano]; born 15 January 1989) is a far-left French politician who has presided over the La France Insoumise group in the National Assembly since October 2021.

Then, "La France Insoumise" claims the victory and brand this law as "loi Panot" on their own youtube page [2],

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathilde_Panot [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyllRDbKWtc

> I'm not sharing any personal views on LFI

Me neither, to be clear.

> they are classified as far-left

By whom? Some small portion of its detractors? Anyway, no need for spreading wrong ideas, regardless the number of people claiming them. French Wikipedia claims this but this is unsubstantiated. Qualifying it as "far" just serves the purpose of wrongly likening it to the Rassemblement National, which is convenient for Macron & its friends. Consequences of LFI or the RN gaining power are radically different.

Now for sure it's not "soft" left.

I believe you when you say LFI pushed this idea. That's very like them.

Emmanuel Macron's party rejected it twice in 2018 and 2019, when it was promoted by left-wing parties, and only changed its mind after the US Supreme Court decision [0]

[0] https://www.francetvinfo.fr/societe/ivg/vrai-ou-fake-avortem...

Macron isn't far left by any stretch of the imagination haha.

As for the conditions, the French constitution usually states general principles so it won't and doesn't need to be as precise as having a number of weeks.

> As for the conditions, the French constitution usually states general principles so it won't and doesn't need to be as precise as having a number of weeks.

So will it make a practical difference or is it just a gesture?

It will, if the laws being passed are preventing a reasonable access, it can be repealed.

but the current laws, which (as is typical in Europe) have far lower term limits than many US states, the UK or (IIRC) anglophone countries in general is not affected?

This wasn't Macron's idea. It was proposed by communists in 2017, and more recently by far left's LFI.

Oh, those pasky far left communists who just want to give people freedom over their bodies. How dare they???? \s

Sure but the inspiration wasn't from them here.

Seen from the USA (by the same people who called Barack Obama a socialist), he probably looks downright communist...

I agree with your takeaway and had the exact same question: does this mean there is a constitutional right to abort at any age, or do the prior legal limits apply? So far I cannot find an answer even in French papers.

Edit: actually, it does state that the [current] law determines the boundaries of that protection.

Looks like it's 14 weeks (https://www.npr.org/2024/03/04/1235217454/france-abortion-ri...)

It's 14 weeks 'no question asked' abortion. For non-medical reason it can be pushed further, as long as 3 third party (2 doctors and a social worker) say 'ok'. Further than that, it's only for medical reasons, again if 2 (or 3?) doctors say you should do it.

I've actually had this discussion two years ago? With a doctor who specialized in finding out genetic defects in the 90s, basically it's very rare to have abortion after the 14th week, and it's only when some developmental issues are found, or when carrying the pregnancy is dangerous (in some cases labor is induced while the pregnant woman under anesthesia, but the fœtus is known to be unviable, those forced labor seems to be the worst situation mentally for patient and sometime medical personnel)

the Constitution article states

> “The law determines the conditions under which the freedom guaranteed to women to resort to voluntary termination of pregnancy is exercised”

So it doesn't really address the issue, it just uses the words "voluntary termination of pregnancy" associated with guaranteed freedom for the first time in history.

It wasnt under threat, but America shows how easily it can be. But sure, make it about some ''far-left' conspiracy or whatever.

And closer home, Poland. So it is not a far fetched idea or fantasy.

> And closer home, Poland

Ironically abortion has been abolished in Poland after it joined the EU.

In 1932 it was the first country in Europe outside the Soviet Union to legalize abortion in cases of rape and threat to maternal health

Basically when the far-rihht Catholics took power. It seems the new government wants to reverse the worst policies from the past.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com