PARIS – It was one of the great stages of feminism in France. Fifty years ago the manifesto of the “343 Salopes” caused a shock throughout the country, paving the way for the legalization of termination of pregnancy. “I have an abortion” was the title on the cover of the New Observer on April 5, 1971, which lined up 343 testimonies of women. Among the signatures there were many excellent names from the cultural and intellectual world, from Jeanne Moreau a Francoise Sagan, gives Marguerite Duras a Catherine Deneuve. In the text, written largely by Simone de Beauvoir, the 343 women claimed to have had an illegal abortion. A sensational gesture that wanted to turn the spotlight on a reality that many pretended not to see.
The courage of the girl who knows how to forgive after the insults for her abortion
by Elena Stancanelli
“One million women abortion every year in France – they wrote – and do it in dangerous conditions due to the clandestine nature of the procedure. I declare to be one of them. I declare that I have had an abortion”. The wealthiest women went to clinics abroad, the others risked septicemia, uterine perforation, peritonitis or lightning embolism, and often death. Almost 5,000 French people, the feminists said at the time, died for lack of health guarantees.
The Polish Marianne
di Helena Janeczek
The poster published in the weekly magazine of the left founded by Jean Daniel it was then renamed a few days later “Manifesto of the 343 Sluts“by the cartoonist Cabu than on Charlie Hebdo who had made fun of the “bitches who got pregnant”. Those were years of battles, excesses and transgressions, not just verbal. The signatories of the text risked being sentenced to up to two years in prison to advance mentalities, shake up society and politics. “I didn’t hesitate for a moment to sign,” the actress Deneuve recalled these days. Four years later, in 1975, the approval of Loi Veil will finally arrive. The historic reform that authorized the termination of pregnancy was defended in parliament by Simone Veil, right-wing woman who had had to overcome the hostility of her political family. And who will deliver a famous speech in front of the deputies: “No woman – he explained – abortions with lightness of mind”.
That principal who bans courses on abortion
by Maria Novella De Luca
“Fifty years later and manifesto is more alive than ever” he comments today Cecile Prieur, director of L’Obs (the new name of the weekly) which dedicated a new cover homage to that feminist struggle with one of the veterans of the time, the actress Francois Fabian, the writer Leïla Sleimani, today committed to legalize abortion in Morocco. Old and new struggles. In Europe, the right to abortion is again under threat in countries like Poland. On the Sunday newspaper Instead, a new appeal has appeared asking to extend the period in which it is possible to abort from 12 to 14 weeks. A request due to the fact that also in France the number of objecting doctors is growing and the hospital bureaucracy makes it difficult for women to exercise their own rights.
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