On Wednesday, French Parliament voted an a bill that would extend the legal limit for women to obtain an abortion. The legislation will allow abortion up to 14 weeks of pregnancy. Previously, abortion was legal in the country up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.
The bill reportedly received 135 votes in favor and 47 votes against, with nine abstentions. Abortion was first legalized in France in 1975, with the threshold being 10 weeks gestation.
National Catholic Register reported that the bill extends the practice of surgical abortions to midwives. Midwives have been legally allowed to prescribe abortion medication since 2016.
“The number of abortions in France, a country of 63 million people, reached a 30-year high in 2019, with 232,244 abortions recorded that year,” NCR added.
Marie-Noelle Battistel, a socialist lawmaker who co-wrote the law, reportedly said that thousands of women in France travel abroad each year to obtain an abortion.
This week, reports claimed that several U.S. states, including Arizona and Florida, are working toward passing legislation banning abortion at 15 weeks gestation.
I covered for Townhall how a 2021 study conducted by the Charlotte Lozier Institute detailed that the majority of European countries restrict abortion to 12 to 15 weeks of pregnancy.
“No European nation allows elective abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, as is effectively permitted in several U.S. states, and America is one of only a small handful of nations, along with China and North Korea, to permit any sort of late-term elective abortion,” CLI associate scholar and author of the study Angelina B. Nguyen said of its findings.
“In comparison, 47 out of 50 European countries analyzed in this report either do not allow elective abortion (8) or limit elective abortion to 15 weeks or earlier (39), whereas 0 out of 50 states in the U.S. have a currently enforceable law limiting elective abortion to 15 weeks,” she added.
On Dec. 1, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which surrounds a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi. The case could overturn the landmark 1973 case Roe v. Wade.
“Mississippi’s law brings the United States a small step closer both to European and global norms,” Nguyen said of CLI’s study. A Dobbs decision is expected this summer.