‘It was a wake-up call’: After Roe v. Wade, French lawmakers seek to enshrine abortion rights

By Maya Szaniecki and Claudia Colliva, CNN
Sat December 2, 2023

When the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, French women were paying close attention. They watched with alarm as those across the Atlantic lost their long-standing right to abortion, seemingly overnight. What if France came next?

“It was a wake-up call for everyone,” French Senator Mélanie Vogel told CNN. “We don’t want to wake up like American women… with this right being taken from us,” she said.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/02/europe/us-overturn-of-roe-v-wade-prompts-france-to-embed-abortion-rights-in-constitution/index.html


France extends abortion limit after year of parliamentary rows

Applause in national assembly as lawmakers vote to extend limit for ending pregnancy from 12 to 14 weeks

Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Wed 23 Feb 2022

France has extended its time limit for abortion after an epic battle in parliament, amid anger that thousands of women had to travel abroad each year to terminate pregnancies in countries such as the Netherlands, Spain or England because of French restrictions.

There was applause in the French national assembly on Wednesday when lawmakers voted definitively to extend the legal limit for ending a pregnancy from 12 to 14 weeks. France’s new time frame is still lower than in some other European countries, including England at 24 weeks.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/23/france-extends-abortion-limit-after-year-of-parliamentary-rows


France – The extension of the abortion period still challenged by Emmanuel Macron

Friday 26th November 2021

ABORTION – Emmanuel Macron has not changed his mind. On a “personal” basis, he remains opposed to extending the abortion period from 12 to 14 weeks. An opposition reaffirmed a few hours before his second meeting with Pope Francis.

It was on the plane to the Vatican that the President of the Republic gave an update on several topics that could be discussed (and tense) with the head of the Catholic Church. PMA, GPA, end of life but also abortion, the extension of which will be debated at the end of November in the National Assembly.

Continued: https://news.in-24.com/news/amp/318895


France to sanction ‘misleading’ anti-abortion websites

France to sanction ‘misleading’ anti-abortion websites
The new law extends existing punishments for interfering with abortion to the internet, and offers a counterpoint to Trump.

By Natalie Huet
2/16/17

French lawmakers Thursday passed a new law sanctioning websites that aim to dissuade women from terminating a pregnancy by using “misleading claims” on abortion.

In its own controversial way, the Socialist government is offering a counterpoint to Donald Trump’s move to reinstate the U.S.’s global gag rule. A Dutch-led funding initiative to support family planning worldwide has also been gaining traction.

Continued at source: Politico: http://www.politico.eu/article/france-to-sanction-misleading-anti-abortion-websites/


France Bans Anti-Abortion Websites that Spread False Health Information

by Sirin Kale
Dec 9 2016, Broadly

Lawmakers in the European country have just passed a bill criminalizing anti-abortion sites that lie about the medical procedure. But is it the answer?

It's been a year of misinformation and bullshit, propaganda and lies—and I'm just talking mainstream Western politics. If you believe we're living in a post-truth age, where conjecture passes for fact and supposition for orthodoxy, you're probably right—but there's a caveat. Anti-abortion activists will say pretty much anything to deny women their reproductive rights, and they always have done. After all, every day is a post-truth day in an anti-abortion activist's world.

[continued at link]
Source: Broadly


French lawmakers ban websites that spread ‘false information’ on abortion

2016-12-07, France24.com

French Senators on Thursday passed a bill to ban pro-life websites from spreading "false information" about abortion, following a heated debate with rightwing lawmakers who argued it would contravene freedom of expression.

The debate comes less than five months before France elects a new president, with the rightwing Les Républicains party candidate François Fillon, a staunch Catholic, tipped to win.

Fillon has said he is "personally" opposed to abortion, but that he will not try to overturn a landmark 1975 law legalising the practice.

The bill passed by senators on Wednesday will extend to the internet a 1993 law criminalising "interference" in abortions in the form of "false information".

[continued a link]
Source: France24.com


French MPs vote to ban abortion websites that intimidate women

Government seeking to criminalise sites that pose as neutral sources of information but promote anti-abortion propaganda

Angelique Chrisafis in Paris

Thursday 1 December 2016, The Guardian

The French National Assembly has approved a plan to outlaw abortion information websites that masquerade as neutral, official services with freephone helpline numbers but promote anti-abortion propaganda and pressure women not to terminate pregnancies.

The Socialist government’s proposal seeks to criminalise any websites that deliberately mislead, intimidate or “exert psychological or moral pressure” on a woman seeking information about terminating a pregnancy, with punishment of up to two years in prison and a €30,000 fine.

[continued at link]
Source: The Guardian


France: Making it an offence to knowingly provide false information about abortion

October 7, 2016, by Safe Abortion

During the last week of September 2016, the French Minister for Families, Childhood and Women’s Rights Laurence Rossignol tabled a regulation as part of a bill on equality and citizenship in the French Senate that aimed to make it an offence for websites to convey “false allegations or give a distorted presentation of information on the nature and consequences of an abortion, in order to mislead with a deterrent purpose” (un amendement pour élargir le délit d’entrave à l’IVG à l’expression numérique. Il prévoirait d’introduire un délit contre les sites qui véhiculent «des allégations ou une présentation faussées, pour induire en erreur dans un but dissuasif sur la nature et les conséquences d’une IVG»).

The amendment was not approved, but it raises bigger questions about the ethics of what has become a widespread practice by many in the anti-abortion movement, not just on websites but also in the street when who women are entering/leaving an abortion clinic are accosted by anti-abortion hecklers and also when they visit what are sometimes called crisis pregnancy centres looking for help to have an abortion.

This week, on 6 October in the UK, the TV Channel 4 programme Dispatches sent women posing as abortion seekers to visit a clinic in order to encounter anti-abortion activists in the street outside the clinic, filmed the exchanges and later interviewed one of them. An article in the Mail on Sunday, in anticipation of the TV programme, reports that an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centre tells women that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. Others claim that abortion causes depression and failure to bond with future children, all false claims based on false evidence.

In the USA, a study by NARAL Pro-Choice America found that there were more crisis pregnancy centres than abortion clinics in the country in 2013.

A report published in 2014 by Education for Choice in the UK on this subject is based on extensive research on this behaviour.

SOURCES: Liberation + Photo Stéphane de Sakutin, AFP, 29 September 2016 + Le Figaro, 27 September 2016

+ Channel 4 Dispatches, Under Cover: Britain’s Abortion Extremists, 6 October 2016 + Mail on Sunday, by Nick Craven, 1 October 2016 + Huffington Post, 19 March 2015

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Source: International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion