PARIS -- Hundreds of people came out in Paris on Saturday, marching in support of the right to abortion for women across the world, just six months after France became the first country to guarantee in its constitution a woman's right to voluntarily terminate a pregnancy. The protest, organized by civil society groups to mark International Safe Abortion Day, also called for greater and easier access to abortion in France, denouncing budget cuts, staff reductions and the closure of abortion centers and maternity wards, which organizers say all contribute to penalizing women. Sarah Durocher, president of France’s not-for-profit family planning services, said French women sometimes have to travel to another region to access the medical services needed to abort, denouncing the “obstacle course” they sometimes face.
Thibault Thomas, 28, said the ongoing trial of a man who has confessed to drugging his wife so that dozens of men could rape her while she was unconscious, was one of the reasons that motivated him to attend the protest on Saturday. “There’s a mood in France, a particular context with the Mazan trial,” he said, referring to the name of the small Provence town where the couple had bought their retirement home, and where the repeated rapes occurred. “This sweeps away all the excuses, or all the mitigating circumstances that we thought could have existed before,” Thomas said.
“In fact it is something broader, generalized.” Earlier this year, France bec.