France becomes 1st country to make abortion constitutional right

Abortion is banned or tightly restricted in Poland and a handful of countries

As France becomes the only country to explicitly guarantee the right to abortion in its constitution, other Europeans look at the US rollback of abortion access and wonder: Could that happen here?

Abortion is broadly legal across Europe, and governments have been gradually expanding abortion rights, with some exceptions. Women can access abortion in more than 40 European nations from Portugal to Russia, with varying rules on how late in a pregnancy it is allowed.

Abortion is banned or tightly restricted in Poland and a handful of tiny countries.

“It may not be an issue today in France, where a majority of people support abortion. But those same people may one day vote for a farright government, and what happened in the US can happen in Europe,” said Mathilde Philip-Gay, a law professor and specialist in French and American constitutional law.

The inscription into France’s constitution will “make it harder for abortion opponents of the future to challenge these rights.”

Here is a look at recent developments on abortion rights in some European countries:

Poland predominantly Catholic bans abortion in almost all cases, with exceptions only when a woman’s life or health is endangered or if the pregnancy results from rape or incest.

For years, abortion was allowed in the case of fetuses with congenital defects. That was struck down in 2020.

The restrictions have led to deaths, primarily of women later in their pregnancies who wanted to have a child.

Women’s rights activists say doctors in Poland now wait for a fetus with no chance of survival to die in the womb rather than perform an abortion. Several women in such cases developed sepsis and died. Abortion is a hot topic under the new government.

Women can access abortion in more than 40 European nations from Portugal to Russia, with varying rules on how late in a pregnancy it is allowed