Global anti-feminist backlash gains ground after decades of equality gains

Spain and France justify enshrining the right to abortion in their Constitutions as a safeguard against a ‘reactionary’ wave that could roll back achievements

Marc Bassets, Berlin
OCT 31, 2025

History never advances in a straight line. Although, as Martin Luther King said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Progress always moves in fits and starts: two steps forward, one step back. This is also the case with women’s rights and equality.

For a decade or more — in Western countries and in the Global South — there have been numerous cases of rights being stripped away after a long period of progress. This regression — according to progressive and liberal political leaders — is linked to the global rise of new forms of authoritarianism and nationalism.

Continued: https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-11-01/global-anti-feminist-backlash-gains-ground-after-decades-of-equality-gains.html

Paris dusts off statues of trailblazing women from 2024 Olympics

AFP
Jul 18, 2025

Paris on Friday installed the first of 10 statues of pioneering French women displayed during the 2024 Olympics in a northern district of the capital. The 10 statues featured as part of the French capital's boundary-breaking opening ceremony for the Summer Games in July last year.

They include Simone Veil, who spearheaded the legalisation of abortion in France, and the feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir. The first of them, a golden representation of the campaigning lawyer Gisele Halimi, was set up in the capital's northern La Chapelle district on Friday.

Continued: https://themercury.com/news/national/paris-dusts-off-statues-of-trailblazing-women-from-2024-olympics/article_e2c74213-2696-5499-89e1-405ba83ddbd8.html

18.07.2025

News

Gisele Halimi

Marie-Claire Chevalier

Going abroad to get an abortion, a struggle for thousands of women in Europe

“Exporting Abortion”, a transnational investigation, reveals that more than 5,000 women in Europe have to travel abroad each year to access abortion services due to obstacles they face in exercising this right in their home country.

20 May 2025
Francesca Barca, Translated by Ciarán Lawless

On 24 April of this year the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) My Voice, My Choice came to a close. The initiative attracted around 1.2 million signatures: a remarkable success for an ECI – a mechanism that calls the European Commission to propose a legal act in an area where the member countries delegated powers to the EU, provided it collects enough signatures. The campaign demanded a financing mechanism to guarantee safe abortion care for all those without access to such services.

Current laws and practices, it seems, are far removed from what civil society knows to be the reality.

Continued: https://voxeurop.eu/en/abortion-abroad-struggle-women-europe/

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