Populist firebrand Marine Le Pen has alleged that discussions on abortion in France, seemingly prompted by the recent Supreme Court decision in the United States, are being used to distract from the more domestically relevant issue of mass immigration.
Heated mainstream discussion in France surrounding the right to an abortion is being used to distract from the issue of widespread immigration into the country, populist leader Marine Le Pen has alleged.
With the overruling of Roe v. Wade in the United States, politicians from French President Emmanual Macron’s La République En Marche have expressed a desire to enshrine abortion in the French constitution seemingly in the hopes of preventing future pro-life legislatures from easily clamping down on the practice.
However, according to a report by Le Figaro, Rassemblement National’s new parliamentary leader and long-time populist firebrand Marine Le Pen has lambasted such a move as a mere distraction from the real issues of mass migration.
“The reality is that En Marche is carrying out a political diversion because it does not want the focus to be on the main concerns of the French people today and their difficulties, which is purchasing power, which is security, which is immigration out of control,” the publication reports Le Pen as saying.
While expressing her understanding of the pro-life position both inside and outside her own party, Le Pen emphasised that there was little chance of abortion becoming more restricted in France in the foreseeable future.
“That there are people who are not happy to see that there are still 200,000 abortions per year in France is not to be criticized, no one can be happy about that,” she admitted, though dismissed the possibility of any party challenging the status quo anytime soon.
However, even if her party was to push for change, Le Pen said that it would only do so by putting the issue to a referendum, and that such a referendum would only occur after a number of seemingly more pressing constitutional matters were dealt with first, including those to do with immigration and the right for foreigners to apply for French citizenship.
More Americans believe the U.S. should prioritize economic issues over abortion, a recent YouGov/CBS News Poll found. https://t.co/MLFtiybamz
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) June 28, 2022
Le Pen’s accusation that the French establishment are using the issue of abortion to distract voters comes as Democrats in the United States attempt to rally behind the issue before the country’s midterm elections in November.
However, according to polling published on Wednesday, this approach does not appear like it will work, with the data seemingly showing instead that the vote will remain a nationwide referendum on the performance of the Biden administration.
“The results affirm that state Republicans remain on offence this year, as they will continue to run campaigns focused on serving as the counterweight to President Biden’s failing economic policies,” the Republican State Leadership Committee said regarding the data gathered by the party.
Things are not looking much better for the Democratic Party at the State level either, with Republicans maintaining a slight lead over the party despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, with 56 per cent of polling respondents giving the issue of either the high cost of living/inflation or the state of the economy in general as their two biggest concerns.
Meanwhile, only 8 per cent of respondents said that their main concern heading into the vote was abortion.
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