Approximately 10,000 people — mainly a young and engaged crowd — gathered at Place Vauban in Paris for the annual March for Life on Jan. 18.
Each year, the march is held around Jan. 17 because on that date in 1975 abortion was first legalized under the Veil Act, named after the health minister at the time, Simone Veil.
This year’s march was held two years after France made history in 2024 by becoming the first and only country in the world to enshrine access to abortion directly in its constitution.
Paris’ March for Life has not been solely focused on abortion, with the debate over life issues becoming intensified in recent months. In March 2025, the French National Assembly approved a bill to legalize assisted dying for adults suffering from incurable, serious, and terminal illnesses, both physical and psychological.
Demonstrators at the march on Sunday protested the French government’s plans to legalize euthanasia.
“They say you can help people die. But the intention is to give death, and that is not our job. It cannot be our job,” said geriatric doctor Geneviève Bourgeois in an interview with EWTN News. “That’s not how you soothe people. There is suffering, but if you kill the sufferer, you don’t kill the suffering, you kill the patient.”
‘Life is a gift from God’
One of the most prominent Catholic voices in France is Bishop Dominique Rey, one of the few senior Church leaders to attend a March for Life.
“We must not touch life. Life is a gift from God,” Rey told EWTN News. “In the defense of life, we need freedom and the courage not to be afraid, even when some media are very opposed to the defense of life, liberty, and freedom.”
He continued: “In France, in Europe, and in the world, we need the courage of the Church to say that this is very important for the future of humanity and for the future of the Church: to be strongly engaged in the defense of life.”
Among those present at this year’s march was Emilie Quinson, who had three abortions earlier in her life. “What was very difficult for me was that I was not informed about what an abortion was, under what circumstances it would take place, or about its consequences,” she told EWTN News.
Today, she is a leading figure in the pro-life movement. “I got married, I have five wonderful children, and my daughter is here with me today,” she said. “I went through a long process of rebuilding and forgiveness, because for a woman who has had an abortion, the hardest thing is forgiveness — first forgiving herself, and then receiving God’s forgiveness.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.