It has been a strange year so far in France. The country is beset by internal problems. Violent crime is soaring, drug traffcking is rife, the economy is stalling, the country’s debts mounting and the farmers revolting.
Yet these all seem secondary issues for President Emmanuel Macron. His focus is societal. First, his government inscribed the guaranteed access to abortion in its constitution, an event celebrated with much fanfare at which Macron was prominent. It was performative politics at its worst, a pointless gesture in a country where abortion rights are not in jeopardy.
