France’s Senate on Thursday voted unanimously in favour of a bill that would recognise the suffering of women convicted of illegal abortions before the procedure was decriminalised in 1975.
A little over one year after France enshrined the right to abortion in its constitution, the country’s senate voted unanimously in favour of legislation that would ‘recognise the suffering’ women who were convicted of illegal abortions prior to decriminalisation.
The bill will still need to be debated and voted on in the Assemblée Nationale before it can become law.
Laurence Rossignol, a member of the centre-left Parti Socialiste and the former minister for women’s rights under ex-president François Hollande, brought forward the bill as a “memorial initiative after decades of shame and silence”.
“What we want is to say that France does not bow to the ill wind blowing across the planet. We also want to confirm the national consensus around the right to abortion with this bill, one year after it was enshrined in the constitution,” Rossignol told France Inter on Thursday.
“When defending the right to abortion is called into question around the world, we must tell the whole world that there are countries that do not bend,” she said a separate interview with AFP.
France first passed the ‘Loi Veil‘ in 1975 (named after health minister Simone Veil) which decriminalised abortion across the country.
In a global first, in 2024 French politicians voted overwhelmingly to make abortion a “guaranteed freedom” in the constitution.
Who would the bill impact?
While the bill has been touted as an attempt to pardon women convicted prior to legalisation, it does not include any plans for formal pardoning or financial compensation in its current form.
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Rossignol has referred to the bill as a ‘memorial proposal’, adding to RTL that the goal of the bill would be “to ensure we do not forget”.
The bill would, as such, create an independent national commission to recognise and research the harm suffered by women who had abortions prior to the Veil law.
It’s estimated that more than 11,000 people were convicted on charges related to having, performing or abetting abortion between 1870 and 1975, RTL reported, but it is not clear how many are still alive today.
During World War II, the Vichy regime made abortion a crime against state security, punishable by the death penalty.
Two women, Marie-Louise Giraud and Désiré Pioge, were guillotined during this period for having helped perform abortions.
The French radio station spoke with one woman, Jocelyne, whose mother was sentenced to eight months in prison for helping a woman to have an abortion in 1962.
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“She was treated like a criminal. Seeing my mother in prison was painful. I was torn apart.”
“We’re repairing that period of her life, the shame the family felt. My mother was alone in this. The important thing is that this law is coming. It doesn’t come too late for my mother,” Jocelyne told RTL.
In 1972, the court case of 16-year-old Marie-Claire Chevalier – who faced prison for having an abortion after being raped – helped bring the topic into spotlight.
Chevalier ended up being acquitted, after the efforts of her lawyers Gisèle Halimi and Monique Antoine, but her mother was given a suspended fine of 500 francs, and the doctor who performed the abortion, Micheline Bambuck, was given a one-year suspended sentence.
Response to the bill
So far there has been widespread support, including in France’s right-leaning senate. Women’s rights groups have also expressed their agreement with the bill.
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“It’s a very good signal: at a time when a midwife has just been arrested in Texas for performing abortions, France is moving in exactly the opposite direction,” Suzy Rojtman, spokesperson for the Collectif national pour les droits des femmes (National Collective for Women’s Rights) told AFP.
A similar initiative to pardon those convicted of discriminatory laws against homosexuality between 1942-1982 also passed in France’s parliament last year, but it is still awaiting the last steps before being finally adopted.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
