In response to the proposed constitutional amendment that would introduce a right to abortion or a guaranteed freedom to have an abortion, a public petition (No. 3776) has been launched, which can be signed. To reach 5,500 signatures, it is important that you sign and share the call for signatures.

https://www.petitiounen.lu/fr/petition/3776?type=PUB

Please read below for further details and the motivation of the petition.

Subject matter of the petition

This petition is launched in order to prevent the inclusion of the right to abortion in the Luxembourg Constitution.

A constitutional bill has been proposed by the political party ‘Déi Lenk’, with the aim of protecting the right to abortion through its inclusion in the Constitution; a proposal that will, after being approved by the Council of State, examined at the Committee on Institutions.

In Luxembourg, voluntary termination of pregnancy has been decriminalized since 2014 and regulated by a law. Whereas a law can be amended by another law, adopted thanks to a simple majority of the deputies, a revision of the Constitution requires a more complex process: the majority of two thirds of the deputies is necessary. Thus, the inscription of a right in the Constitution confers on it a certain guarantee against possible abrogations.

However, the ethical questions raised by voluntary termination of pregnancy are so important that its inclusion in the fundamental text of our country must be prevented.

Motivation of the petition

The Constitution is the most decisive legislative text of the Grand Duchy; it includes fundamental rights such as the right to physical and moral integrity or the right to freedom of thought.

Abortion, while it cannot be considered as a homicide in the strict sense of the word, consists however in the extermination of a life in the process of becoming. In Luxembourg, a pregnant woman can have an abortion until the end of the twelfth week of pregnancy (or before the end of the fourteenth week of amenorrhea). At this stage of gestation, the fetus has a human appearance, we distinguish the different parts of the body, the heart beats! It is about life in its most fragile form. Taking this into account, abortion must therefore, in a society that flatters itself of having reached a higher degree of civilization, be constantly subjected to ethical questions and not be guaranteed by the fundamental text. Moreover, it is also important not to ignore or overlook the physical and psychological distress that an abortion, an irreversible act, may cause a woman.

In addition to these ethical considerations that revolve around abortion, the inclusion of the right to abortion in the Constitution carries another risk that it would be perilous to ignore:
Entrenching the right to abortion in the Constitution could also hinder the freedom of conscience of a doctor opposed to this practice. (Freedom of conscience being also a fundamental right enshrined in the Constitution!)

By its nature, the right to abortion cannot be close to the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution.