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Christian Jacob, the head of the right-wing Republicans party, told lawmakers that the comments were unbecoming of a French head of state. “I cannot support a bill whose only goal is to piss off the French,” he said.

Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader and one of Mr. Macron’s main opponents in the upcoming election, accused him of “waging war” on the unvaccinated.

“Even if one doesn’t share their choice, they have broken none of our country’s laws,” she told reporters in Parliament late Tuesday, saying Mr. Macron had made a political and moral mistake. “He is continuing his policy of division, of pitting the French against one another,” she added.

Mr. Macron’s comments come in a heated political climate — less than four months before the presidential election — and after he vowed in a recent interview that he had learned from mistakes made earlier in his term, when his one-liners were regularly criticized as dismissive and out of touch.

The president’s opponents have maneuvered in Parliament to delay the passing of the vaccination bill, and his supporters have reported receiving death threats and insults because they are backing the legislation. One lawmaker’s home garage was the target of arson and hostile graffiti last month.

Stéphane Séjourné, a member of the European Parliament and close ally of Mr. Macron’s, defended the president’s comments, arguing on Twitter that it was the unvaccinated who were bothering the French by overburdening hospitals, exhausting health workers and “forcing the rest of the population to endure restrictions.”

“So yes, we have to piss them off in return,” he said.