Emmanuel Macron he is not going through the happiest time as President of the French Republic. In fact, his government is now under fire on several fronts. In particular, girls and women are very dissatisfied with the reform, which will drag on until the age of 64, compared to the current 62 years, the age at which they can take a break from working life, with the payment of contributions for 43 years. The issue is very acute, and this provision is disputed on a bilateral basis: the whole of France has taken to the streets, and not just the centre-right opposition. In early March 2023, about a million people demonstrated against the law, and on January 31, there were 600,000 of them. But faced with a maneuver that displeases a large part of French citizens, there are other measures that have drawn applause from the female population, creating a kind of short circuit in which the consensus on the current government risks to live here and there. Also in early March 2023, Prime Minister Elisabeth Bourne announced that from 2024 women under 25 will be able to receive reusable products for the menstrual cycle for free. “Irregular menstruation,” the prime minister explained, “is a reality that affects too many women. This is an everyday injustice.” That’s why this solution was introduced: for those under 25, it will be enough to go to a pharmacy, buy the products in question, and then ask for a refund. The aim is to fight so-called “periodic poverty”: in France, at least one in five women does not have enough money to afford regular sanitary pads.
Thus, opposite currents of sympathy and discontent cross France, but the latest step of President Emmanuel Macron can sign a truce with the most progressive part of the population. paying tribute to Giselle Halimi, a feminist lawyer who was instrumental in legalizing abortion in France, Macron announced on Wednesday, March 8, that he is preparing a billwhich may be ready already “in the coming months” for enshrine in the Constitution the freedom to choose “voluntary termination of pregnancy”.”. There is already a national law that made abortion legal in France in 1975, and today, theoretically, there is no serious threat to its legality, but last year’s decision of the US Supreme Court abolish the constitutional right to abortion this intensified France’s efforts to protect and recognize abortion as an inalienable right.
“Courts around the world,” Macron said during a ceremony honoring Giselle Halimi in Paris, “returned to the issue of women’s rights because reactionary ideologues want to take revenge on lawyers and activists who have succeeded over the years. to achieve very important results.” The allusion was obviously directed at the United States, but probably also Orban’s Hungary, and even more Poland, where the right to abortion is almost destroyed. Rape and incest are the only conditions under which Polish women are allowed to terminate a pregnancy today, but in 2020 alone, 1,074 out of 1,100 abortions were performed in the country due to fetal abnormalities, so the ban outlawed abortion in most cases. who is against correctly say that many women use illegal procedures and dangerous for abortion. Just as it does in the ultra-conservative Republican United States, which in 2023 seems to have gone back two centuries instead.
In France, where secularism is such a mainstay that it borders on the status of religious dogma, the debate about protecting the right to abortion through a constitutional amendment began last year in the National Assembly, the lower house of the French parliament. Parliament, and this year continued in the Senate. Both governing bodies supported the idea, but Macron’s mention of developing a constitutional bill within “several months” gave the lawmaking process a new urgency and gave it a personal endorsement. Macron in a conversation with a historian Palace of Justice in the center of Paris, he said he hoped that the “power” of the “message” of lawyer Halimi “will help us change our Constitution to enshrine in it the freedom of women to voluntarily terminate a pregnancy so that nothing can or abolish what should be irreversible.” Giselle Halimi fought on many fronts, including for the independence of Algeria, but one of her most important successes was the defense of Marie-Claire Chevalier, a 16-year-old high school student accused of illegal abortion after being raped by a fellow student.Halimi was acquitted in 1972, and the case marked a turning point in the legalization of abortion.
But despite this, Emmanuel Macron has not reconciled with those who do not forgive him the reform of the pension system, on the contrary: the president received sharp reproaches in the same family as the feminist lawyer Halimi, who accused him of choosing the moment of the worst politician in honor of a woman. known for her progressive views on social problems. Serge Halimi, one of her three sons and former managing director of Le Monde Diplomatique, a monthly magazine on politics, culture and international affairs, even refused to attend the ceremony. He issued a statement saying that “at a time when women are doing the hardest work, it is clear that they will be the first victims of Macron’s proposal for pension reform”, stressing that this is why he was unable to participate. “My mother would have defended their cause and demonstrated with them,” she said. In a word, the political and ideological confrontation in France is very tense, and Emmanuel Macron, despite his attempts, is still far from rapprochement with the progressive party, without which he cannot continue to rule. For all that, eyes are also on Marine Le Pen’s historical adversary, who may have gained support from the turmoil surrounding the Macron government.
Source: Elle