Fifty years after the Veil law, several thousand opponents of abortion demonstrated on Sunday in Paris as part of the “march for life” which also aims to denounce the desire to relaunch the parliamentary debate on the law relating to the end of life.
“Abortion, enough is enough, we are marching for life”, “euthanasia, law of contempt”: intoning these slogans, the procession of this demonstration, at the initiative of activists belonging to the conservative Catholic ranks, is left at 2:00 p.m. from Place du Trocadéro, in the west of the capital.
The event is organized each year around the anniversary of the law passed by Simone Veil relating to voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion) and promulgated on January 17, 1975.
“It’s a march for the right to live to show that the debate is still open in France, so that the French question the beliefs that are defended here,” Sophie, 23, who like the other demonstrators interviewed, did not wish to reveal his last name.
“Since it entered the Constitution, it worries us a lot. Today, it is a possibility (abortion), tomorrow we will perhaps be criminals for refusing to accept the Constitution,” he said. Jean, a 38-year-old Parisian, is alarmed.
Speaking on a podium above which a banner proclaimed “50 years of defense of life” and where “50 years of political defeats” was crossed out, the president of the March for Life, Nicolas Tardy- Joubert said he was not “afraid to say that abortion is the leading cause of death in France for the human species”.
“This year 2025 is very special. 50 years ago, the Veil law which decriminalized abortion was promulgated. This law caused heavy human losses and led to the death and exclusion of more than 10 million babies from French society,” he told the crowd before they observed a minute of silence.
According to the latest official figures, 243,623 abortions were recorded in 2023, or 8,600 more than the previous year.
If the rules governing abortion have been relaxed since 1975 and if “the freedom guaranteed to women” to resort to abortion was included in the Constitution in 2024, feminist associations are alarmed by a right that is still “fragile ” and report “regular attacks” from his opponents.
--“change of civilization”-
In addition to opposition to abortion, the organizers of the “march for life” are calling, like last year, for a compulsory ultrasound from the sixth week of pregnancy, making it possible to “hear the fetal heart beat”, or even a three-day reflection period before any abortion.
They also call to “encourage childbirth under X” and to defend “the absolute right to conscientious objection of health personnel and to protect the specific conscience clause.”
Another subject also on the agenda of the demonstration, the rejection of any “legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia” and the call for “a major plan so that palliative care is accessible” to all.
“Let us not forget the threats to the end of life with the new legislative proposals which could be studied in the coming weeks,” warns Nicolas Tardy-Joubert
“I think it would really be a change in civilization if we accepted euthanasia. It’s an individualistic way of seeing things,” added Maylis, 54, from Yvelines, in the procession.
Supported by the Attal government, a bill on end of life was to legalize assisted suicide and, in certain cases, euthanasia, with strict conditions and without using these terms, preferring to speak of “active assistance in dying” . Its examination was interrupted by the dissolution of the National Assembly in June 2024.
In his general policy declaration on Tuesday, the Prime Minister, François Bayrou, did not comment on this sensitive subject, neither on the examination deadline nor on the substance, referring the text “to the power of initiative” of Parliament .
