Luxembourg - “The freedom to have recourse to voluntary termination of pregnancy is guaranteed. The law shall determine the conditions under which that freedom is exercised.” That is the formula approved by Luxembourg’s Chambre des Députés on 3 March 2026 in the first constitutional vote on proposed revision No. 8379. The step is politically significant, but in legal terms it must be made clear that the reform has not yet been completed, because an amendment to the Luxembourg Constitution requires two successive votes, separated by at least three months, both with a two-thirds majority.
How the proposal originated
The initiative came from deputy Marc Baum of déi Lénk, who tabled the proposal on 7 May 2024. The original text was broader than the version that has now reached the first vote: it stated that “the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy as well as the right to contraception are guaranteed. The law shall determine the conditions under which free and effective access to these rights is exercised.” The intention was to entrench both abortion and contraception at constitutional level. The promoters spoke of a “worrying trend towards calling into question women’s acquired rights”. In Luxembourg, abortion has gradually been removed from the punitive scope of criminal law through the reforms of 2012 and 2014. A legislative proposal in 2025 provided for the abolition of the three-day waiting period between the legal consultation and the procedure, reinforcing an approach based on self-determination. The constitutional proposal therefore sits within a legal framework that had already widened this possibility for women in recent years, but which the proposer still regarded as vulnerable to future reversals.
In October 2025, the Commission des Institutions adopted an amendment that narrowed and redrafted the text. From that point, the reference to a “right” gave way to the “freedom to have recourse to voluntary termination of pregnancy”; the reference to contraception disappeared; and the wording on “free and effective access” was also removed. The official commentary on the amendment states: “It is proposed to use the term ‘freedom’ instead of ‘right’ in order to avoid any confusion with the category of fundamental rights.” The Chamber itself publicly explained that a political compromise had been reached on this point, whereas the qualified consensus needed to include contraception in the Constitution did not materialise.
In its supplementary opinion of 19 December 2025, the Conseil d’État observed that, once placed within the constitutional section devoted to public freedoms, describing it as a “right” or as a “freedom” “does not have a different legal effect” at constitutional level. In substance, the Council of State downplayed the significance of the terminological dispute: in both cases, it is a public freedom whose exercise may be regulated by law, provided that the principles of legality and proportionality are respected. The same opinion notes, more coolly, that the removal of the reference to contraception was not accompanied by any substantive explanation from the promoters.
The Commission report of 9 February 2026 sets out the final landing point of the reform and clarifies its constitutional location. The new wording is inserted into Article 15, paragraph 3, namely the provision stating that “women and men are equal in rights and duties” and that the State must promote the removal of obstacles to equality. The same report also contains another decisive sentence, often overlooked in public debate: “This proposed revision does not require any amendment to the current legislation on voluntary termination of pregnancy.” That means that, at present, constitutional entrenchment strengthens the level of protection and its symbolic and legal weight, but does not automatically rewrite the ordinary legislation already in force.
The approval process for the amendment
On 3 March 2026, the Chamber therefore approved the first constitutional vote with 48 votes in favour, 6 against and 2 abstentions. The Chambre des Députés itself recalls that, because this is a constitutional revision, a second vote is still required, at least three months later, and once again with a qualified two-thirds majority, with no proxy voting. If the process reaches its conclusion, this would be the first amendment to the revised Constitution that entered into force on 1 July 2023. Luxembourg could become the second State in which abortion is written into the Constitution.
As matters stand, then, this is where things have reached: Luxembourg has taken a highly dangerous formal and political step towards inserting abortion into the Constitution, but the text that emerged from Parliament is narrower than the original proposal, because it protects the freedom to have recourse to abortion, refers the conditions for its exercise back to the law, and leaves out contraception. For the revision to be described as truly complete, the decisive step of the second constitutional vote is still missing.
The voice of the Catholic Church
In September 2025, the Catholic Church in Luxembourg spoke out publicly against the proposal to enshrine abortionin the Constitution as a fundamental right or public freedom, warning that such a move would alter the legal and ethical framework governing the protection of life. In its statement, it pointed to the inviolability of human dignity affirmed in Article 12 of the Constitution, arguing that this also applies to the unborn child, and warned that raising voluntary termination of pregnancy to the status of a constitutional right would end up subordinating the right to life of the unborn child to the principle of the woman’s self-determination. For this reason, the Church called for abortion not to be turned into a constitutionally guaranteed freedom and instead urged stronger social, economic and culturalconditions to help women and families welcome life.
P.G.
Silere non possum