From Margins to Majority: How Luxembourg Constitutionalized Abortion Rights

Luxembourg's vote to enshrine access to abortion in the country’s constitution marks an important turning point for the country. But the move has broader significance – it shows how a seemingly marginal issue can gain enormous public attention. Journalist Roos van Hennekeler tells the story of how the proposal was transformed into a nationwide movement, fueled by civil society, public backing, and cross-party collaboration.

In early March, Luxembourg’s Parliament voted to enshrine access to abortion in the country’s constitution. The amendment passed comfortably, even though constitutional changes require a two-thirds majority. Yet what ended with such broad parliamentary backing had begun two years earlier as an initially ignored proposal from a small party with just two seats in Parliament.

The path that transformed this proposal from a minority idea into a constitutional amendment offers a timely reminder to political parties across Europe: exerting influence does not always require being in government.

A wake-up call

In 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. For nearly 50 years, that ruling had guaranteed the right to abortion for citizens across the United States. Its reversal removed federal protection for the procedure and allowed individual states to ban it again. Across Europe, politicians and activists began asking themselves whether rights that appeared settled might in reality prove more fragile than previously thought.

Luxembourg’s proposal emerged directly from that realization, following a similar constitutional amendment in France in early 2024. If abortion access was broadly accepted in Luxembourg, small left-wing party Déi Lénk argued, then writing it into the constitution would ensure its future protection.

From momentum to movement

The initial proposal was drafted in close collaboration with feminist civil society organizations and submitted in May 2024. “Then, nothing happened for six months,” recalls Maurice Magar, a campaigner for the party. By January 2025, his team decided something had to be done. “We believed this issue had the potential to unite a broad political coalition if pushed into the public debate.”

After an initial petition, Déi Lénk reached out to civil society groups once more, asking them to amplify the campaign and bring the issue into the public sphere in order to create a wider conversation. Several organizations soon became actively involved, including NGOs Planning Familial, CID Fraen an Gender, and Amnesty International Luxembourg. Their role proved decisive.

“They used all their channels, multiplying our reach enormously,” explains Alija Suljic, another campaigner. The party soon stepped back from the spotlight. “We wanted this to turn into a broad movement, instead of a partisan effort.”

That strategy reflected a broader political calculation. For the small party, the goal was not to claim political credit but to create a coalition large enough to win a constitutional majority. “We wanted to promote the idea that we were all capable of doing this together,” Suljic said, describing the alliance between activists, NGOs, and political actors that eventually worked on the campaign.

Momentum grew when a nationwide poll asked Luxembourgers how they felt about the issue. The results showed 70% supported a constitutional amendment protecting abortion access, reinforcing the sense that the reform enjoyed broad public backing. Politicians of the country’s center-right and liberal governing parties – who often vote as a bloc – were becoming divided.

As media attention and public support grew, it became increasingly difficult for the remaining opponents to maintain their position. Activists swiftly capitalized on that development. Social media campaigns singled out the still-skeptical politicians, portraying them as aligned not with the majority of Luxembourg's voters, but with more hardline anti-abortion positions elsewhere in the world.

Meanwhile, in Parliament, talks gradually produced a cross-party coalition large enough to secure the two-thirds majority required for the amendment.

United for change

This episode shows just how powerful it can be to start a conversation that transcends party lines and grows into a nationwide civic coalition. The push to constitutionally protect abortion in France followed a similar path. There, too, the idea was first advanced by opposition politicians and feminist organizations in 2022 – shortly after Roe v. Wade was overturned – before becoming a government-backed and overwhelmingly popular constitutional amendment about two years later, supported by around 86% of the French public.

Episodes like these are easy to overlook in contemporary politics, where attention tends to focus on those who hold executive power. Modern political commentary often treats government authority as the only form of power that matters. Yet our democratic systems offer many more avenues for influence.

Opposition parties may not directly control the government, but they can still set the agenda, mobilize civil society, shape public debate and build the coalitions needed to move the policies they care about forward. Government majorities may ultimately pass laws, but the ideas that shape and inform those laws often originate elsewhere – on opposition benches, in activist networks, and during public conversations that slowly shift the political center of gravity.