France First Nation in World to Guarantee Abortion in its Constitution

As abortions began to increase in the early 1800s, France was one of the first nations in the world to protect babies in the womb and their mothers by prohibiting abortion in its Penal Code of 1810.  Then, beginning in 1975, the French government increasingly authorizing abortion through a series of changes to its Penal Code.  After the U.S. Supreme Court Hobbs ruling in 2022, reversing Roe v. Wade, France’s President Emmanuel Macron and other government leaders made it their goal to amend the Constitution of France by adding abortion as a guaranteed “right.”  During the first week of March 2024, President Macron and 91 percent of the national legislators in France approved the amendment.