In March 2024, French government elites held a ceremony at Versailles to amend its Constitution and protect abortion. The event looked more like a political spectacle than a sober legal milestone. Lawmakers cheered as they voted to make the deliberate ending of unborn life a constitutional “freedom.” Within months, Spain and Luxembourg rushed to imitate France, each treating abortion not as a tragedy but as a national badge of progress. This wave of constitutional amendments marks a grim new phase in Europe’s moral decline. Governments that once claimed to defend the vulnerable now work to cement the right to destroy them.
France’s new text inserted into Article 34 declares “the freedom of women to have recourse to voluntary termination of pregnancy.” President Emmanuel Macron praised it as a victory for liberty. In truth, it enshrines exclusion. The amendment shields abortion from democratic reversal and elevates it above conscience. French lawmakers ignored the tens of thousands of citizens who marched for life and the pleas of religious leaders who warned against turning death into a right. The Constitution now protects a procedure that ends more than 200,000 unborn lives in France each year. It offers no protection to those lives and no support to mothers in crisis.
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France’s knee-jerk constitutional betrayal has ignited a dangerous precedent, emboldening Luxembourg’s elites to follow suit with their own amendment to cement abortion as untouchable.
Luxembourg’s ruling coalition has jumped on the bandwagon and is now pushing a constitutional amendment to lock in abortion. Lawmakers there argue over whether to call abortion a “right” or a “freedom.” The distinction means little, because either term guarantees that the unborn child has no claim to protection. The country’s Deputy Prime Minister calls this change a safeguard against “regressive forces.” In reality, it is a safeguard against conscience. It forbids future leaders from restoring moral balance or defending life. The government treats the destruction of the unborn as a matter of national identity. The battle for life in Luxembourg rages on.
And on October 3 of this year, Spain’s socialist government quickly followed the examples of France and Luxembourg. In another knee-jerk act of high political theater, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has framed his proposal as a defense of women’s freedom and a rebuke to conservatives. He accused opponents of “merging with the far right” because they questioned the wisdom of constitutionalizing abortion. His reform would declare abortion a “fundamental right,” a step even France avoided. It would silence dissenting doctors and force taxpayers to underwrite the procedure. To pass, Sánchez needs a three-fifths majority in the parliament. If he succeeds, Spain will join France in locking abortion into its highest law while its birth rate falls to record lows. The same government that struggles to protect and feed families now celebrates the power to end a family before it begins.
The sudden rush to rewrite constitutions did not come from the people. It came from political elites and international networks of abortion advocates. After the 2022 Dobbs decision in the United States overturned Roe v. Wade, European activists panicked. They feared that democratic accountability might soon reach them. To prevent debate, they seek to entrench abortion in constitutional law where voters cannot touch it. The European Parliament has already called for adding abortion to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. This campaign does not expand freedom. It builds a legal wall around an industry that profits from loss.
Constitutionalizing abortion also distorts democracy. It also removes the issue from public deliberation and hands it to judges and bureaucrats. Once enshrined, it becomes almost impossible to amend. Future parliaments may struggle to adjust gestational limits or strengthen conscience protections without facing constitutional challenges. Courts would gain sweeping authority to strike down any restriction, claiming to defend “freedom.” Voters would lose the right to decide how their nations treat life and death.
Advocates claim these amendments secure equality and protect women. Yet in practice, constitutional guarantees have never solved the deeper problems that drive abortion. France still suffers from unequal healthcare, economic hardship, and a lack of family support. Rural clinics close. Maternity wards disappear. Women who want to keep their babies find little help. A constitutional promise of abortion does not create justice; it replaces it with despair. In every country that liberalized abortion, the poor and marginalized have borne the heaviest cost.
This campaign treats abortion as an emblem of progress, but it exposes moral exhaustion. Governments that once prized human dignity now use constitutions to deny it. Lawmakers claim compassion while stripping the unborn of every protection. They speak of freedom while silencing conscience. They celebrate equality while erasing the most powerless members of the human family.
Europe stands at a crossroads. One path honors the right to life and the duty to care for both mother and child. The other path hardens abortion into constitutional stone and calls it progress. France has chosen the latter. Spain and Luxembourg may soon follow. Pro-life citizens must speak plainly and without apology. A government that writes death into its founding law abandons its moral authority. The task now is to rebuild a culture that values life at every stage and refuses to disguise violence as freedom.
LifeNews.com Note: Raimundo Rojas is the Outreach Director for the National Right to Life Committee. He is a former president of Florida Right to Life and has presented the pro-life message to millions in Spanish-language media outlets. He represents NRLC at the United Nations as an NGO. Rojas was born in Santiago de las Vegas, Havana, Cuba and he and his family escaped to the United States in 1968.
