No fundamental right to abortion
Liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity) is the tripartite national motto of France, finding its origins in the French Revolution (1789-1799).
In voting, ashamedly overwhelmingly and to a standing ovation, in an extraordinary congress of both houses of parliament convened in Versailles on March 4 to revise the country’s 1958 constitution to enshrine women’s socalled “guaranteed freedom” to abort, thereby elevating the heinous act of abortion to the status of a fundamental human right, the French parliament has taken the notion of ‘liberty’ abysmally out of context, in the process trampling underfoot all notions of ‘equality’ and ‘fraternity’.
France has now become the first country to elevate the so-called ‘right to abortion’ to the supreme status of a fundamental human right – an antithesis in itself if ever there was one – by enshrining it in its very constitution.
The constitutional reform, the 25th amendment to modern France’s founding document, and the first since 2008, amends article 34 of the French constitution to specify that “the law determines the conditions by which is exercised the freedom of women to voluntarily terminate a pregnancy, which is guaranteed”.
There can be no doubt that the right to liberty is one of the paramount fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual.
Yet, before Prime Minister Gabriel Attal can, with all due respect, speak of the right to abortion and regurgitate the abortionist soundbite that “we’re sending a message to all women: your body belongs to you and no one can decide for you”; and before President Emmanuel
Macron can, also with all due respect, describe the move as “French pride” that had sent a “universal message”, one must put that right to liberty in proper context within the entire framework of fundamental human rights and freedoms.
Malta’s own constitution does exactly that, setting the scene in article 32, being the very opening article of Chapter IV dealing with Fundamental Rights and Freedoms of the Individual.
There it is made manifestly clear that, while every person in Malta is entitled to the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual therein laid out, among which the right to liberty, and this irrespectively of his race, place of origin, political opinions, colour, creed, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity, yet, these same fundamental rights and freedoms are subjected to the respect for the rights and freedoms of others and to the public interest.
It then goes on to make it abundantly clear that those rights are afforded protection subject to the limitations of that protection designed to ensure that the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms by any individual does not prejudice the rights and freedoms of others or the public interest.
Man is a social animal and cannot be allowed to act egotistically within society.
He must, on the contrary, act altruistically if that society is to flourish and have a future. In conditioning the right to liberty to respect for the rights and freedoms of others, and to the public interest, and, therefore, in doing away with any notion of “absoluteness”, the State ensures that respect is paid to those equally important French notions of “equality” and “fraternity”, which are vital to ensure a fair social environment for all.
There is then another relevant consideration. The fundamental right to liberty never extended to mean the dubious right to do whatever one likes with one’s own body, which is the pretext on which the so called right to abortion is based.
Even if one were to concede that there was such a right to do what one likes with one’s body, a foetus, although physiologically related to the maternal organism, to which it is naturally connected and on which it is dependent, has a separate and distinct existence, including a different genetic identity, and a separate circulatory system and bloodstream (the blood may even be of a different type) from that of the woman carrying it and cannot, therefore, be equated to just another “organ” or “body part” of that woman.
A non-pregnant woman cannot be said to have a missing organ or body part.
The mother and embryo/ foetus, although embraced in the most intimate relationship, are, therefore, at all times two separate persons.
Of all the fundamental human rights and freedoms, the paramount and overriding one is, undoubtedly, that of the right to life. That is, in fact, the very first fundamental human right that is recognised by our own constitution.
It is scientifically accepted that the point in time at which human life starts is that of fertilisation/conception. This biological reality is not affected by arguments to the effect that, until implantation within the lining of the uterus, usually within a few days from egg fertilisation, the human embryo may
not be considered, from an ontological point of view, as an individual.
As has been, in fact, pointed out, “there has been no one whose existence can be traced back to any entity other than the fertilised egg. The biological line of existence of each individual, without exception, begins precisely when fertilisation of the egg is successful”.
There can, therefore, be no moral justification for abortion as this fatally infringes on the right to life of a separate living individual human being, which is the very embryo/foetus sought to be destroyed.
That same embryo/foetus is equally entitled to the enjoyment of its supremely overriding fundamental right to life as against any fundamental right to liberty of the mother carrying it; and, in a true spirit of fraternity, in the absence of any grave reasons which might threaten her own life, that same mother
has a duty to respect the right to life of the embryo/foetus being carried by her.
The Vatican was, therefore, more than correct to immediately issue a public statement of condemnation, clearly stating that “there can be no ‘right’ to take a human life” and appealing to “all governments and all religious traditions to do their best so that, in this phase of history, the protection of life becomes an absolute priority”.
In becoming the first country in the world to explicitly include the right to abortion in its constitution, France has, therefore, absolutely nothing to boast about but should, rather, hang its head in shame.
France would have done much better by taking a leaf out of the US Supreme Court, which, in 2022, bravely removed the right to abortion.
The right to liberty never extended to mean the dubious right to do whatever one likes with one’s own body