Abortion rights are featuring in this year’s European election campaign in a way we have not seen before.
MAGDALENA FRENNHOFF LARSÉN
15th March 2024
The recent landmark decision in France to inscribe the right to abortion in the constitution serves to protect the law that first legalised abortion in the country in 1975. This law—the so-called Veil law—was championed by Simone Veil, one of France’s most admired and respected political figures, and an icon of the women’s-rights movement.
In 1974, Veil, a magistrate who had been asked by the French president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, to serve as health minister in his government, delivered a momentous speech. She presented the public-health case for the decriminalisation of abortion to the National Assembly, which at the time was composed almost entirely of men.
Continued: https://www.socialeurope.eu/abortion-rights-at-issue-in-european-elections