FRANCE, YUGOSLAVIA & SLOVENIA – Abortion in three national Constitutions, not just one or two

News | France |

by Marge Berer, 12 September 2024

The more we ask, the more we’ve learned! As this newsletter reported earlier this month, Yugoslavia was the first country to include abortion rights in their constitution, though not using the word “rights” at all, in fact. The second country was France, and here is the exact wording in French of the inclusion of abortion in the Constitution of France, also not mentioning rights:

“La loi détermine les conditions dans lesquelles s’exerce la liberté garantie à la femme d’avoir recours à une interruption volontaire de grossesse.”

Translation by Veronique Sahier: “The law shall determine the conditions under which the freedom guaranteed to a woman to have recourse to a voluntary interruption of pregnancy is exercised.”

She adds that: La liberté (freedom) was used because in the French Senate, they refused to enshrine the words le droit (the right). [1]

Then I contacted Camille Butin at IPPF in Belgium about a report regarding the law in Slovenia, who also have the right to abortion in their constitution. This, she told me, was carried over from when Slovenia became an independent country, following the break-up of Yugoslavia. This is reported in MedLaw. [2]

That led me to a PubMed search, which unearthed a second article about Slovenia in MedLaw, whose abstract states, translated into English:

“The Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia includes: (a) the freedom to decide about the birth of one’s own child (freedom of birth-decision), and (b) the right of conscientious objection, including the right to abortion. This discussion focuses on the principles of “free choice and women’s reproductive freedom. The right of conscientious objection in relation to the right to abortion is also discussed.” [2]  But unless I understand this wrong, abortion is a freedom and CO is a right.

This third article’s abstract states: “Certain aspects of the right to health care and the provision of health insurance and health services in Slovenia since its independence, and adoption of a constitution in December 1991, are discussed. The dilemmas raised by conscientious objections by health care workers and the right to legal abortions are pertinently dealt with.” [3]

Can anyone add to this growing list of the history of including the freedom/right to have an abortion in national constitutions?

SOURCES: (1) Véronique Sehier, France. Rapporteure de “Droits sexuels et reproductifs en Europe, entre menaces et progrés”, de la Délégation Droits des Femmes et Egalité du CESE. Ancienne co-présidente du Planning Familial #LibresdeNosChoix.

(2) Camille Butin, IPPF. Slovenia text from MedLaw. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10396920/. E-mail: 11 September 2024.

(3) Constitutional aspects of the right to health care in Slovenia, by I Kristan. MedLaw. 1995;14(3-4):239-44.

Notes:

Yugoslavia was the first country where the right to abortion was included in the national Constitution. The breakup of Yugoslavia into the seven independent states pictured in the map above, including Slovenia, took place between 1990 and January 1992. The brief history that accompanies the map is quite interesting!

SOURCE: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1989-1992/breakup-yugoslavia#:~:text=It%20was%20also%20fundamentally%20inconsistent,dissolved%20into%20its%20constituent%20states.

The diverse information on Google in answer to the question of when Yugoslavia broke up is also very interesting!

Also worth noting is the fact that PubMed is swimming with articles about conscientious objection to abortion. A quick search there for “conscientious objection to abortion” found 334 articles. An equally quick search for “constitutional right to abortion” found 623 results, but on the first of the 63 pages with that list of articles, almost all of them were about the removal of the right to abortion in the USA. In contrast, note that the dissenting minority of three Supreme Court judges, who fought the majority ruling that removed Roe v. Wade, insisted that Roe v. Wade had created a constitutional right to abortion. See the following ICWRSA Newsletter articles from 2022-23: