Two French films that came out within a few weeks of one another on the legalisation of abortion in 1975, following the MLAC activism in the previous years, the lawyer Gisèle Halimi‘s court pleadings, and Giscard’s underlying (and relatively) progressive presidency, which left Simone Veil endure the nasty flak of an exclusively male French Assembly. (Note: I have not watched either of the movies!)
I posted this picture on the ‘Og last June, when I went to Rouen. At the time Simone Veil had just passed away and I wanted to recall her single-handed fight for making abortion legal in France… I received last week an email I first took for a spam, email from a curator of the European Parliament, in Strasbourg (where Simone Veil was for a while a European deputy and its President, its first female President), preparing a permanent exhibit in her memory and wishing to use my picture in the exhibit, to illustrate another perspective on her, away from official and family photographs. Completely unexpected, but I obviously gave immediately my agreement.
Today is March 08, International Women’s Day, which also coincides with the 60th anniversary of the creation of the French equivalent of Planned Parenthood, le Planning Familial. The poster for the celebration of this anniversary is above [with Liberté half-cut from the picture], with three Simone who contributed to women’s rights: Simone de Beauvoir as feminist philosopher, Simone Veil as the lawmaker who succeeded in making abortion legal in France, and Simone Iff, as founder of Planning Familial… Given the current threats on the funding of Planning Familial, I want to stress their essential role in sexual education and information, and in providing free support and assistance towards pregnancy terminations. (Obviously, things are worse in the US where all Republican candidates call for defunding Planned Parenthood…)
Xi'an's Og 