France has moved a step closer to becoming the first country in the world to enshrine abortion as a constitutional right, after lawmakers approved a resolution in the lower house to guarantee access to “the right to voluntarily end a pregnancy”.
In a rare cross-party move, members of parliament from the left’s La France Insoumise party and Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition agreed on the wording of a clause that could be added to the constitution. It read: “The law guarantees the effectiveness and equal access to the right to voluntarily end a pregnancy.”
