Emmanuel Macron is playing a dangerous game with abortion rights in France

The president is flirting with the pro-natalist far right, even as parliament debates whether to enshrine pro-choice laws

Cécile Simmons, The Guardian
Sun 28 Jan 2024

France needs babies. During a press conference on 16 January, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, pledged to tackle the scourge of infertility and offered enhanced parental “childbirth leave” as part of his “demographic rearmament” plan to revive the country’s declining birthrate.

While his goals may be commendable, Macron’s rhetoric sounds alarmingly close to that of authoritarian and rightwing populist leaders who have been aggressively pursuing pro-natalist policies in recent years. After all, Vladimir Putin recently urged Russian women to have “eight or more children” as he seeks to reverse the decades of population decline that have only been exacerbated by heavy casualties in Ukraine.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/28/emmanuel-macron-abortion-france-president-natalist-far-right-laws

‘Extraordinary moment’: the 1970s abortion case that changed French law

Issued on: 10/10/2022

Paris (AFP) – Five decades ago, a lawyer convinced a French court to acquit a teenage girl who illegally terminated her pregnancy after being raped, a landmark case that would pave the way for the right to abortion in France.

Marie-Claire Chevalier was 16 when a boy the same age attacked her and made her pregnant. Her mother, an employee of the Paris public transport authority, helped her find a backstreet abortion.

Continued; https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20221010-extraordinary-moment-the-1970s-abortion-case-that-changed-french-law

Where France Differs on Abortion

The French and Americans once saw eye to eye on reproductive rights. Today, not so much.

By Pamela Druckerman
JUNE 30, 2022

When the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last week, a quote attributed to Simone de Beauvoir quickly circulated on French social media. “Never forget that all it takes is a political, economic or religious crisis for women’s rights to be called into question,” it said. “These rights are never fully acquired. You must remain vigilant your whole life.”

The French are feeling vigilant in part because, historically, they moved in near-lockstep with the U.S. on abortion and related reproductive rights. In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling granting married couples access to birth-control medication; France authorized free access to the pill, for anyone, two years later. The U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling on Roe in 1973; two years later, France decriminalized abortion by passing what became known as the loi Veil, after Simone Veil, the celebrated postwar politician who, as health minister, spearheaded the effort to enact the legislation.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/france-abortion-rights-roe-united-states/661447/

30.06.2022

Marie-Claire Chevalier, Catalyst for French Abortion Law, Dies at 66

While in high school in 1972, she was raped and became pregnant. Her illegal abortion paved the way for France to decriminalize the procedure in 1975.

By Katharine Q. Seelye and Constant Méheut
Feb. 10, 2022

Marie-Claire Chevalier was 16 when she was raped by a high school classmate and became pregnant. She then had an abortion, which was illegal at the time unless the woman’s life was in danger.

Her classmate was later arrested on unrelated charges of auto theft. In a bid to avoid prosecution, he revealed Ms. Chevalier’s abortion to the authorities; he was released, and she was arrested and imprisoned.

Continued:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/world/europe/marie-claire-chevalier-dead.html

French Manifesto of the 343 turns 50

April 5, 2021
By Marta Garde

Paris, Apr 5 (efe-epa).- Fifty years ago, 343 women in France were called ‘sluts’ for having the courage to sign a petition admitting to having had a then illegal abortion.

Claudine Monteil, one of the signatories, was 21 years old at the time and the youngest member of the group that included famous personalities such as feminist writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and actress Catherine Deneuve.

Continued: https://www.laprensalatina.com/french-manifesto-of-the-343-turns-50/

05.04.2021

French Manifesto of the 343

legalization of abortion

It can feel uncomfortable to keep telling our abortion stories – but it is still essential

Many experiences are like mine: unexceptional, not ‘deserving’ or ‘worthy’. The more of those testimonies we hear, the stronger we are in our fight to protect women’s rights

Emma Beddington
Mon 16 Nov 2020

One of the last things I did before lockdown was attend a rally supporting the protests against Poland’s constitutional court ruling that introduced a near-total ban on abortion. Hardening the country’s already terrifyingly restrictive current law, it would, if enforced, remove one of the few narrow exceptions still permitted: termination in the event of congenital birth defects.

The scale of protests in Poland has been extraordinary – and hopeful. With up to 100,000 people gathering nightly in Warsaw, they seem to have forced a pause in implementation of this appalling ruling. My damp, local version was less impressive – there were fewer than 100 of us (including dogs and babies), carefully distanced, in cagoules and masks – but no less moving, hearing young Polish women and men stand up and denounce a sclerotic, repressive ancien regime I’m desperate to see them sweep away.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/16/it-can-feel-uncomfortable-to-keep-telling-our-abortion-stories-but-it-is-still-essential

France – ’Feminist icon’ changed abortion laws

August 28, 2020

Tunisian-born French human rights lawyer Gisele Halimi was 12 when she made her first stand as a feminist. It was 1939, and, in her Sephardic Jewish home in majority-Muslim Tunisia, she went on an eight-day hunger strike against her parents' rules.

She demanded that they treat her equally to her two brothers, not force her to serve them their meals, not impose religious fervour upon her and also allow her to read. Her father, whom she later said had been disappointed to have a daughter, caved in. That night, she wrote in her diary: “I have won my first little piece of liberty.”

Continued: https://www.smh.com.au/national/feminist-icon-changed-abortion-laws-20200828-p55qa2.html

28.08.2020

Featured

abortion law reform

Catherine Deneuve

Choisir La Cause des Femmes

Francois Mitterrand

Gisèle Halimi

Manifesto 343

Marie-Claire Chevalier

FRANCE – The Simone-de-Beauvoir Prize 2019 has gone to Salvadoran Sara García Gross, for her work for the right to abortion

FRANCE – The Simone-de-Beauvoir Prize 2019 has gone to Salvadoran Sara García Gross, for her work for the right to abortion

by International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion
Jan 11, 2019

Sara García Gross has been advocating for the right of women to decide what to do with their bodies for a decade now, in a country where the anti-abortion legislation is among the most restrictive in the world.

The award will be presented at the Maison de l’Amérique latine in Paris. It was created in 2008 on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Simone de Beauvoir in order to “help mobilise international solidarity, reaffirm the rights of women in the world, guarantee the protection of those who today struggle against the risk to women’s lives, and defend by their side the ideals of equality and peace”.

Continued: http://www.safeabortionwomensright.org/france-the-simone-de-beauvoir-prize-2019-has-gone-to-salvadoran-sara-garcia-gross-for-her-work-for-the-right-to-abortion/

11.01.2019

Featured

News

Citizens’ Group for the Decriminalisation of Abortion

Sara García Gross

Sihem Habchi

Simone de Beauvoir

Simone-de-Beauvoir Prize

How 343 Women Made French History by Talking About Their Abortions

How 343 Women Made French History by Talking About Their Abortions

By Jess McHugh
November 26, 2018

On April 5, 1971, in France, 343 filmmakers, writers, actresses, singers and philosophers ended a long-held silence.

“One million women have abortions each year in France,” they wrote in a manifesto published in the magazine Nouvel Observateur. “I declare that I am one of them. I declare that I’ve had an abortion. We demand open access to contraceptives; we demand open abortion.”

Continued: http://time.com/5459995/manifesto-343-abortion-france/

USA – Let’s Talk About My Abortion (and Yours)

Let’s Talk About My Abortion (and Yours)

By Cindi Leive
Ms. Leive is a former editor in chief of Glamour and Self.
June 30, 2018

Several months ago, I appeared on a morning TV show alongside Cecile Richards, then the president of Planned Parenthood. Our topic had been women’s activism, and we’d both spoken in equal amounts. But when I checked Twitter later, the violent insults were flying only at Ms. Richards, with commenters calling her a “baby butcher” and “this puke bitch” for her support of abortion rights. None took aim at me — and as I read the stream, I felt more cowardly than I can ever remember, as if I were crouched in a foxhole while Ms. Richards took fire for the rest of us.

Why was I letting her take the heat? After all, I’d had an abortion myself.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/opinion/sunday/abortion-kennedy-supreme-court.html