France’s latest move to protect abortion rights should inspire us all.
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Enlightenment philosophers were read widely by the educated classes in the American colonies and Europe. Revolutionary fervor shook Europe’s most populous country, France, beginning in 1787 and ending in 1799. It reached its first high point in 1789 with the end of the ancien régime and the further weakening of the feudal system.
But a new “shot heard round the world” was fired by U.S. Supreme Court on June 24, 2022.
The Court was not undergirded by Enlightenment philosophies, nor did it base its decision on knowledge, freedom, and happiness. Instead, the Justices based their salvo on the tyranny of Christian nationalist autocracy and the full merging of church and state.
The Court disregarded the issue of precedent when it overturned *Roe v. Wade *(1973) in its *Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization *decision, thus unraveling the legal right to abortion that Americans maintained for nearly the last 50 years. The Court left it to the states to decide whether they would grant reproductive rights.
Since Dobbs, many state legislatures have banned reproductive healthcare for pregnant people and those who wish to become pregnant. They have also cast doubt on the use of in vitro fertilization procedures (IVF) and the use of mifepristone and misoprostol, safe and effective drugs for medication abortions.
Looks like the author didn’t actually take the time to look at situation in France before they opened their mouth.
The constitutional amendments sound great at first, but are purely performative. While they prevent someone from being prosecuted for getting an abortion, they don’t protect practicionners, and they don’t make the access to abortion a positive right. There’s already a very limited and shrinking number of clinics that practice it, and there’s nothing stopping a government from making it nearly impossible to open new ones or maintain existing ones. Mind you this is a change from the originally proposed law by the National Assembly, which did make abortion a positive right.
https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2023/02/14/le-droit-a-l-ivg-dans-la-constitution-une-arnaque-a-la-liberte_6161725_3232.html (this article is from last year, we’ve known all this to be the case from the start of this project)
Moreover Macron keeps talking about “demographic rearmement”, it’s very clear he sees women as not much more than baby makers.
https://www.challenges.fr/idees/rearmement-demographique-les-mots-qui-inquietent-les-femmes_880587
Religion should not be tolerated anywhere. It’s a plague.
