france and abortion rights

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France’s exceptional women, their imprint on diplomacy

There is great potential for France and India to further women’s rights across the world

 voluntarily terminate a pregnancy

March 4, 2024 will be remembered , in French Constitution, for  “freedom of women to voluntarily terminate a pregnancy”, 

making France the first country in the world to enshrine it as a constitutional right, 49 years after abortion became legal. 

this decision sends out a universal message of solidarity to women across the globe.

Groundbreaking work

history of women’s rights in France 

The Second Sex book  -  

1 we have to go back to the year 1949 when French feminist icon Simone de Beauvoir published The Second Sex.

 2 n the second volume of this very long book, which opens with the infamous statement-turned-feminist motto, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”, Beauvoir dedicates an entire section to abortion in the chapter on motherhood.

3 she champions women’s right to the freedom of choice, which is essential to existentialism.

 4 According to her,if we want care about her , and she is to give life on her terms, then she needs, in addition to contraception, a free, safe and legal abortion service available to her.”

5  Though abortion was largely practised during Beauvoir’s times, a woman could be sentenced to up to five years of imprisonment. 

6  She states, “Free, safe and legal abortion should be available to every woman. The alternative to a legal abortion is a backstreet abortion, which often has dire consequences for women, such as haemorrhaging, septicaemia, and death itself”. 

7  Her statement recalls the poignant autobiographical account by Nobel Prize winner for Literature Annie Ernaux in L’évènement where she narrates the story of her illegal abortion back in 1963.

8 When The Second Sex was published in 1949, the text was an immediate success and translated into dozens of languages across the world, paving the way for the legalisation of abortion in France. 

A powerful petition

“Manifesto of the 343”

1 In 1971, Beauvoir penned the “Manifesto of the 343”, signed by 343 eminent women who opened up to publicly claim that they had had an abortion. 

2 The petition, published in the French social democratic magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, starts with this powerful statement, “One million women in France have abortions every year. 

३  I declare that I am one of them. I declare that I have had an abortion. Just as we demand free access to contraception, we demand the freedom to have an abortion.” 

इसका क्या परिणाम हो सकता था ? 

१ This act of civil disobedience, laying bare the hypocrisy  /  ढोंग रचना of a system while exposing themselves to potential prosecution,

 २ was instrument for the adoption of the Veil law four years later, which decriminalised abortion for French women.

३  It was named after the then Health Minister and women’s rights icon Simone Veil.

The Second Sex remains, until today, a foundational book for modern feminism

It was first translated into Hindi in 1991, by Indian feminist and novelist, Prabha Khaitan, as Stree Upekshita, which translates literally as “The Neglecting of Women”. 

 

This is the reason why national award winning Hindi publisher Vani Prakashan decided to commission a new translation in 2022, with Monica Singh translating it directly from French. 

The first of the two volumes was recently released last month during the New Delhi World Book Fair, giving Hindi readers full and faithful access to the text.

The fact that abortion has now become a fundamental right, enshrined in the French Constitution, owes much to Beauvoir.

Simone Veil 

This historic decision is also an occasion to remember another iconic champion of women’s rights in Europe, Simone Veil, the  French politician who survived the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. 

She try for  the law legalising abortion in France in 1975 when she was Minister of Public Health, and became the first female leader of the European Parliament.

Pantheon

she is among the eminent figures who still inspires all those who fight for women’s rights all over the world. 

We hope that Simone Veil and Simone de Beauvoir feel proud of how France has carried forward their legacy.

A feminist foreign policy

 France champions a feminist foreign policy, with a dedicated strategy that seeks to mainstream the promotion of gender equality and the rights of women and girls in all its bilateral undertakings, development assistance, and advocacy in multilateral bodies. 

Generation Equality Forum 

In 2021, France co-chaired the Generation Equality Forum, which was the most important international feminist event since the Beijing World Conference on Women in 1995, in partnership with civil society and young people.

भारत की क्या स्थिति है ? 

India has historically made 

• strong international commitments in favour of women’s rights,
•  including efforts to implement Sustainable Development Goal 5 (Gender equality), 
• joining the 2019 Biarritz Partnership for Gender Equality, and,
•  recently, gaining membership in the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

 I believe there is strong potential for France and India to do more together to further women’s rights around the world.