France protects abortion: BBC News Review

Abortion - France makes it a constitutional right.

This is News Review from BBC

Learning English where we help you understand news headlines in English.

I'm Beth. And I'm Phil.

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from the headlines. Now, today's story.

"We're sending a message to all women: your body belongs to you

and no one can decide for you." Those were the words

of the French prime minister after parliament voted to include

the right to an abortion in the country's constitution.

Research into public opinion suggests that the measure is

supported by a large proportion of French people, though

it has been criticised by anti-abortion campaigners in the Catholic church.

You've been looking at the headlines. What's the vocabulary

that people need to understand this news story in English?

We have: enshrines, lament and follow its lead.

This is News Review from BBC

Learning English.

Let's have a look at our first headline.

This is from France 24.

France enshrines abortion as a constitutional right in historic vote.

So, France has put the right to have an abortion into its constitution.

We are looking at the word enshrine. I can see that

enshrine has the word shrine in it. Phil,

can you tell us why that's important?

OK. A shrine is a place of worship and

it's an important part of the verb enshrine.

Let's start by looking at it

literally. You can see that

it has the prefix en- which is about something being inside something.

So, if something is enshrined,

literally, it's put inside a shrine because people think

it's very important or sacred.

So that's the literal meaning.

It's about treating something as so important that you put it in a shrine.

But we're not talking about religious things here.

So why is it being used in this story?

This is a metaphorical use

and it takes this idea that something is very important and that

it needs to be protected legally. So, in this case,

France has enshrined the right to abortion

in its constitution to protect it.

And we might talk about other countries enshrining the rights to free speech

or enshrining the idea of freedom of religion in their laws, for example.

OK, let's look at that again.

Let's have our next headline.

This is from

the Catholic News Agency. French bishops lament country's enshrinement

of abortion in constitution.

This is saying that bishops in France,

that's senior people in the church, are opposed

to the change in the constitution.

Now we're looking at the word lament.

Phil, what does it mean? OK, here it's a verb.

It can also be a noun and the most important thing

about its meaning is that

it's an expression of sadness. As a verb, it means to express sadness.

So here it means that French bishops are expressing their sadness

about the change. Now lament is a word that we do quite often see

in news headlines.

Can you give us some other examples?

Well, as a noun,

it can be a song or poem that expresses sadness.

You could have a lament for times past or a lament for lost youth

that's nostalgic about the past and sad at

how things have changed.  

Now, we don't really use it for everyday situations,

so I'm not going to write a lament about how late

my train was this morning.

OK, let's look at that again.

Next headline please.

This is from Euractiv. France hopes other EU

countries follow its lead on abortion.

Now, this headline is referring

to a French minister who has said that she hopes other EU

countries will take similar measures when it comes to abortion.

Now we're going to look at the phrase follow its lead.

Phil, this makes me think of a dog.

You take a dog for a walk on a lead.

Is that relevant? Well, kind of. You use a lead,

that is a noun, to lead,

that is a verb, a dog to where you want to go.

So, lead can be a verb or a noun and it has this idea to take someone somewhere.

So the verb lead is straightforward.

It means to take or direct someone.

But here we've got a noun. What does it mean?

Well, in this case,

it's a bit like direction.

So, we've got follow its lead, or follow France's lead,

and it means to go in the same direction or to do something similar.

That's a metaphorical use,

but we can use it literally as well, can't we Beth?

Yes. So, for example, if I was teaching you a dance,

I might say follow my lead and it means

follow my direction.

OK, let's look at that again.

We've had enshrines -

protects something in law, lament - express

sadness, and follow its lead -

go in the same direction.

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