It was in the First Chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal, where lawyers traditionally take the oath, that Emmanuel Macron paid a national tribute to Gisèle Halimi on Wednesday March 8, on the occasion of International Human Rights Day. women. In line with the fights for the right to abortion led by the famous feminist lawyer, who died in July 2020 at the age of 93, the President of the Republic announced the presentation “in the coming months” of a ” bill “to include the voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG) in the Constitution.
Emmanuel Macron has thus paved the way for a “constitutionalization” of abortion, a request made for a long time by feminist associations. In recent weeks, another parliamentary procedure was underway on the subject: the Senate, with a right-wing majority, had adopted, on February 1, a constitutional bill which enshrined the use of abortion as a component of “freedom of the woman “. On November 24, the National Assembly also adopted this text at first reading, but with a different formula. She opted for a “right to abortion”, i.e. a positive obligation for the State to guarantee it. If the two chambers managed to agree on second reading, the text should, according to article 89 of the Constitution, have been submitted to a referendum.
The fact that Emmanuel Macron chooses to table a constitutional bill makes it possible to avoid a referendum, a politically delicate procedure, because the right to abortion is relatively consensual to date. If a vote on the text in identical terms by the two chambers is indeed required, the President of the Republic can then decide to submit it to Congress – the meeting of the Assembly and the Senate -, the text then having to obtain a majority of three-fifths to pass.
Gisèle Halimi’s “pantheonization” project “in progress”
During the tribute to Gisèle Halimi, Emmanuel Macron underlined the lawyer’s constant commitment to women’s rights. He also reported on his fights against colonization. “She carried the cause of Algerian independence. She was the prosecutor of what the French authorities of the time did the way they did it”, noted the Head of State, in the presence of his predecessor François Hollande, the highest judicial authorities of the country and ministers or former ministers, recalling Gisèle Halimi’s fight against torture in Algeria.
“If today the war in Algeria has left the courtrooms, it must now take its full place in our memory here in France and also in Algeria”, continued the President of the Republic, without commenting on a possible entry into the Activist Hall of Fame. This entry into the temple of the figures of the Republic, from Jean Moulin to Simone Veil, was recommended by the historian Benjamin Stora among the avenues likely to seal the reconciliation of memories between France and Algeria and within French society but it is seen with a very bad eye on the right and the extreme right of the political spectrum. The study of the file is still “in progress”, however assured the Elysée in the face of concerns that the national tribute will bury the project of “pantheonization” of Gisèle Halimi.
Before Emmanuel Macron, his eldest son, Jean-Yves Halimi, also paid a vibrant tribute to his mother, hailing her “entry into history”. “You join in the Pantheon of our national story the two Simones, de Beauvoir and Veil, your sisters in struggle and your personal friends,” he said.
Another of his sons, journalist Serge Halimi, a left-wing activist and former director of Le Monde diplomatique, for his part boycotted the tribute, deploring that he intervened in full mobilization against an “extremely unfair” pension reform, which his mother would have fought. Same boycott for Violaine Lucas, president of the association “Choose the cause of women” co-founded by Gisèle Halimi in 1971, who denounced a “political instrumentalization”. All over France, demonstrators marched to defend women’s rights on the occasion of March 8. A day placed under the sign of the fight against pension reform and wage inequality.
