The Enlightenment of the French Abortion Revolution

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

− Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Concord Hymn,” 1837

The opening shots of the American Revolution at the battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, sparked not only freedom from imperial tyranny and rule in what would become the United States, but also gave impetus to the realities in other Western countries, especially upon the continent of Europe, that the people could end the perennial yoke of monarchies.

While some of these revolutions were more successful than others, the movement was undergirded by the philosophical, artistic, and political European intellectual movement of the 17^th and 18^th centuries known as the Enlightenment based on ideas celebrating reason, nature, and humanity and how individuals understand the universe to improve their condition.

This philosophical project emphasized reason and individualism rather than tradition. Its goal was for a rational humanity based on knowledge, freedom, and happiness. Thinkers such as Descartes, Locke, Newton, Kant, Goethe, Voltaire, Rousseau, Spinoza, Montesquieu, and Adam Smith become the movement’s leading exponents.

Enlightenment philosophes had been read widely in the American colonies and in Europe by the educated classes. Revolutionary fervor shook Europe’s most populous country, France, beginning in 1787 and ending in 1799, reaching its first high point in 1789 signaling the end of the ancien régime and the further weakening of the feudal system.

A recent “shot heard round the world” was fired by the majority of “justices” in the U.S. Supreme Court on June 24, 2022. Undergirded not by Enlightenment philosophies emphasizing reason and individualism or based on knowledge, freedom, and happiness, the Court based its salvo on the tyranny of Christian nationalist autocracy and the full connection and merging between church and state.

The Supreme Court disregarded the issue of precedent (Stare Decisis—a Latin term meaning “let the decision stand”—when it overturned Roe v. Wade (1973) unraveling the legal right to abortion for nearly the last 50 years in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. The Court left it to the states to decide whether they would legalize reproductive rights.

Since Dobbs, many state legislatures have banned reproductive healthcare for pregnant people and those who wish to become pregnant, and also cast into doubt the use of safe and effective drugs used in medication abortions, mifepristone and misoprostol, and in vitro fertilization procedures.

Comprehending fully that movements for good and for evil often spread from one nation to another, the French Parliament and President Emmanuel Macron acted to erect a clear and impenetrable wall to repel this illiberal and counter Enlightenment revolution to invade French shores.

Both houses of Parliament passed, and Macron signed and sealed with hot wax in Paris a constitutional amendment coinciding with International Women’s Day, a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to abortion in its Article 34. Though abortion has been legal in France since 1975, France is now the first nation to officially enshrine abortion protections into its constitution.

At the signing ceremony, Macron pledged also to push for the right to terminate a pregnancy within the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights.

“Today is not the end of the story but the start of a fight,” he said, at the Ministry of Justice. “We’re going to lead this fight in our continent, in our Europe, where reactionary forces are attacking women’s rights.”

France’s actions will give impetus to the realities in other Western countries, especially the United States, that the people can end the perennial yoke of Christian nationalism.

Viva la revolution!!

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This Post is republished on Medium.

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