France marks 50 years since journey to decriminalise abortion began

Sarah Elzas with RFI

29 November 2024 at 1:57 am·1-min read

Simone Veil opens the debate on decriminalising abortion at the National Assembly, on 26 November, 1974.

Fifty years ago the French parliament passed a groundbreaking bill that would eventually decriminalise abortion, championed by health minister Simone Veil, amidst intense opposition.

After three days of fierce debate, the first draft of the bill was passed on 29 November, 1974. And while the right to abortion has since been enshrined in the French constitution, a world first, the bill’s adoption by the National Assembly half a century ago was far from a given.

Newly elected president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing had promised to decriminalise abortion, but his justice minister, Jean Lecanuet, who was tasked with drafting the legislation, refused to do it for personal, ethical reasons.

Health minister Simone Veil instead took up the challenge, and presented the bill to an (overwhelmingly male) National Assembly – opening the debate with a speech in which she argued that women were getting abortions regardless of the law, which should therefore be changed.

"We can no longer close our eyes to the 300,000 abortions a year that, each year, scar the women of this country, which flout our laws and humiliate or traumatise those who resort to them," she said.

'No woman resorts to abortion with joy'

As a Jewish woman and a survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp, Veil’s support for the legislation drew personal, often anti-Semitic, attacks and even death threats.

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'No woman resorts to abortion with joy'

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