Manifesto of the 343

Last updated

The Manifesto of the 343 (French : Manifeste des 343) is a French petition penned by Simone de Beauvoir, and signed by 343 women, all publicly declaring that they had had an illegal abortion. The manifesto was published under the title, "Un appel de 343 femmes" ('an appeal by 343 women'), on 5 April 1971, in issue 334 of Le Nouvel Observateur , a social democratic French weekly magazine. The piece was the sole topic on the magazine cover. [1] [2] At the time abortion was illegal in France, and by admitting publicly to having aborted, women exposed themselves to criminal prosecution.[ citation needed ]

Contents

The manifesto called for the legalization of abortion and free access to contraception. It paved the way for the "Veil Act" — named for Health Minister Simone Veil — which repealed the penalty for voluntarily terminating a pregnancy. The law was passed in December 1974 and January 1975, and afforded women the ability to abort during the first ten weeks (later extended to fourteen weeks).

Background

Following the Liberation of Paris in 1944, the death penalty for abortion was abolished, but abortion continued to be prosecuted vigorously. Illegal abortion rates remained fairly high during the post-war period, and increasing numbers of women began to travel to the United Kingdom to procure abortions after the UK legalized abortion in 1967.

During the period of civil unrest during and after the events of May 1968, a new civil rights movement was becoming prominent throughout the media, campaigning for more equal rights and opportunities for women. The Mouvement de Libération des Femmes's ("The Women's Liberation Front") main goal was to advocate for women's right of autonomy from their husbands, as well as rights that pertained to the use of contraception and legalization of abortion.

The text

The text of the manifesto was written by Simone de Beauvoir. [2] It began (and translated into English): [3]

Un million de femmes se font avorter chaque année en France. Elles le font dans des conditions dangereuses en raison de la clandestinité à laquelle elles sont condamnées, alors que cette opération, pratiquée sous contrôle médical, est des plus simples.

On fait le silence sur ces millions de femmes. Je déclare que je suis l'une d'elles. Je déclare avoir avorté. De même que nous réclamons le libre accès aux moyens anticonceptionnels, nous réclamons l'avortement libre.

One million women in France have abortions every year. Condemned to secrecy, they do so in dangerous conditions, while under medical supervision, this is one of the simplest procedures.

Society is silencing these millions of women. 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.

Response

The week after the manifesto appeared, the front page of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo carried a drawing attacking male politicians with the question "Qui a engrossé les 343 salopes du manifeste sur l'avortement?" [4] [5] ("Who got the 343 sluts from the abortion manifesto pregnant?"). [6] This drawing by Cabu gave the manifesto its familiar nickname, often mistaken as the original title. [1] For Maud Gelly, [7] doctor and author, "A caricature meant at ridiculing politicians left a macho insult to qualify these women, and that tells a lot about the anti-feminism sometimes dominating the rewriting of the history of women's struggles."

In 1971, the feminist group Choisir ("To Choose") was founded by Gisèle Halimi, to protect the women who had signed the manifesto. In 1972, Choisir formed itself into a clearly reformist body, and the campaign greatly influenced the passing of the law allowing contraception and legal abortion carried through by Simone Veil in 1974. [8]

It was the inspiration for a February 3, 1973, manifesto by 331 French doctors declaring their support for abortion rights:

We want freedom of abortion. It is entirely the woman's decision. We reject any entity that forces her to defend herself, perpetuates an atmosphere of guilt, and allows underground abortions to persist ... [9]

Notable signatories

See also

Further reading

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Françoise d'Eaubonne</span> French ecofeminist (1920–2005)

Françoise d'Eaubonne was a French author, labour rights activist, environmentalist, and feminist. Her 1974 book, Le Féminisme ou la Mort, introduced the term ecofeminism. She co-founded the Front homosexuel d'action révolutionnaire, a homosexual revolutionary alliance in Paris.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Delphine Seyrig</span> French actress and film director (1932–1990)

Delphine Claire Beltiane Seyrig was a Lebanese-born French actress and film director. She came to prominence in Alain Resnais's 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad, and later acted in films by Chantal Akerman, Luis Buñuel, Marguerite Duras, Ulrike Ottinger, Francois Truffaut, and Fred Zinneman. She directed three films, including the documentary Sois belle et tais-toi (1981).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marina Vlady</span> French actress

Marina Vlady is a French actress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abortion in France</span>

Abortion in France is legal upon request until 14 weeks after conception. Abortions at later stages of pregnancy up until birth are allowed if two physicians certify that the abortion will be done to prevent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman; a risk to the life of the pregnant woman; or that the child will suffer from a particularly severe illness recognized as incurable. The abortion law was liberalized by the Veil Act in 1975.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gisèle Halimi</span> Tunisian-French lawyer and politician (1927–2020)

Gisèle Halimi was a Tunisian-French lawyer, politician, essayist and feminist activist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cabu</span> French caricaturist

Jean Maurice Jules Cabut, known by the pen-name Cabu, was a French comic strip artist and caricaturist. He was murdered in the January 2015 shooting attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper offices. Cabu was a staff cartoonist and shareholder at Charlie Hebdo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nadine Trintignant</span> French writer and filmmaker (born 1934)

Nadine Trintignant is a French filmmaker and novelist. She is known for making films that surround the topic of family and relationships, such as Ça n'arrive qu'aux autres and L'été prochain. Her film Mon amour, mon amour was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival.

The Manifesto of the 121, was an open letter signed by 121 intellectuals and published on 6 September 1960 in the magazine Vérité-Liberté. It called on the French government, then headed by the Gaullist Michel Debré, and public opinion to recognise the Algerian War as a legitimate struggle for independence, denouncing the use of torture by the French army, and calling for French conscientious objectors to the conflict to be respected by the authorities.

Feminism in France is the history of feminist thought and movements in France. Feminism in France can be roughly divided into three waves: First-wave feminism from the French Revolution through the Third Republic which was concerned chiefly with suffrage and civic rights for women. Significant contributions came from revolutionary movements of the French Revolution of 1848 and Paris Commune, culminating in 1944 when women gained the right to vote.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claudine Monteil</span> French writer, womens rights specialist, historian and diplomat

Claudine Monteil is a French writer, women's rights specialist, historian, and a former French diplomat.

Antoinette Fouque was a French psychoanalyst who was involved in the French women's liberation movement. She was the leader of one of the groups that originally formed the French Women's Liberation (MLF), and she later registered the trademark MLF specifically under her name. She helped found the publishing house Éditions des Femmes as well as the first collection of audio-books in France, "Bibliothèque des voix". Her position in feminist theory was primarily essentialist, and heavily based in psychoanalysis. She helped author Le Dictionnaire universel des créatrices (2013), a biographical dictionary about creative women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Françoise Fabian</span> French actress

Michelle Cortès, known professionally as Françoise Fabian, is a French film actress. She has appeared in more than 100 films since 1956. In 1971, Fabian signed the Manifesto of the 343, publicly declaring having had an abortion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christine Delphy</span> French sociologist and feminist activist (born 1941)

Christine Delphy is a French feminist sociologist, writer and theorist. Known for pioneering materialist feminism, she co-founded the French women's liberation movement in 1970 and the journal Nouvelles questions féministes with Simone de Beauvoir in 1981.

Claude Perdriel is owner-manager of the Perdriel Group that publishes Sciences et Avenir, Challenges, Rue89 and during 1970–1980, the Paris daily Le Matin de Paris. It also published Le Nouvel Observateur from its foundation in 1964 to 2014 when it was sold to a group of investors that already published Le Monde.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">We've had abortions!</span> German magazine Stern 1971 cover declaration by 374 women

Wir haben abgetrieben! was the headline on the cover of the West German magazine Stern on 6 June 1971. 374 women, some, but not all, of whom had a high public profile, publicly stated that they had had pregnancies terminated, which at that time was illegal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maya Surduts</span>

Maya Surduts was a Latvian-born, French activist and women's rights supporter. She considered herself to be a permanent revolutionary and lived in various countries including South Africa, Switzerland, the United States and Cuba protesting regimes which discriminated against or exploited people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thérèse Clerc</span> French militant feminist

Thérèse Clerc (1927–2016) was a French militant feminist who was active principally in the city of Montreuil. A member of the Movement for Freedom of Abortion and Birth Control, she performed clandestines abortions for women in difficulty in her small Montreuil apartment until 1975 when abortions were legalized under the Veil Law. In 2000, she founded the Maison des Femmes, a cultural, social and feminist centre for women who had been the victims of violence, later renamed Maison Thérèse Clerc. For many years, Clerc fought for the establishment of a self-managed home for elderly women in Montreuil, finally succeeding with the Maison des Babayagas in 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ANCIC (organization)</span> Non-governmental organization

The National Association of Abortion and Contraception Centers is a non-profit, non-governmental association of persons and professionals who work in pregnancy and abortion planning centers, in the private or public sector, in France, who provide advice on and support for abortion and contraception.

The Loi Veil, officially the "Law of 17 January 1975 on the voluntary termination of pregnancy", is a law pertaining to the decriminalization of abortion in France. It was prepared by Simone Veil, minister of health during the presidency of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simone Iff</span> French activist for womens rights and reproductive health

Simone Iff, née Simone Balfet, was a French activist noted for her advocacy for women's rights and reproductive health. She is noted for her 30 years of activism for the legalization of contraception and abortion in France. Further, Iff was a founding member of the French Family Planning Movement and served as its president from 1969 to 1973.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
  2. 1 2 Marie Renard (February 11, 2008). "Swans Commentary: The Unfinished Business of Simone de Beauvoir" . Retrieved December 19, 2008.
  3. "Manifesto of the 343 (translated into English), with signatures". 1971-04-05. Archived from the original on 2016-06-11. Retrieved 2016-06-11.
  4. Image of cover from Charlie Hebdo
  5. "Brief history of women's rights". SOS Femmes. Retrieved December 19, 2008.
  6. Charlie Hebdo (March 6, 2020). "Rétrospective - Le manifeste des 343 salopes". YouTube (in French). Retrieved 20 October 2022.
  7. Gelly, Maud (2005). "Le MLAC et la lutte pour le droit à l'avortement". Fondation Copernic. Archived from the original on 5 April 2008. Retrieved 21 October 2022. PDF
  8. Raylene L. Ramsay (2003). French women in politics: writing power, paternal legitimization, and maternal legacies. Berghahn Books. pp. 135–139. ISBN   978-1-57181-081-6 . Retrieved 15 January 2011.
  9. Zancarini-Fournel, Michelle (2003). "Histoire(s) du MLAC (1973-1975)". Clio. Histoire, Femmes et Sociétés (in French) (Mixité et coéducation 18-2003). Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail: 241–252. doi: 10.4000/clio.624 . ISSN   1777-5299. Archived from the original on 2008-12-17. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
  10. In the 2007 film 2 Days in Paris , the mother, played by Marie Pillet, of a character played by Julie Delpy acknowledges herself to have been one of the "343 bitches", reflecting her action in real life.
  11. Hervé, Fred (19 January 2010). "Boris Vian : Sa veuve Ursula Vian-Kübler, est décédée..." pure people (in French). Archived from the original on 2010-01-22. Retrieved 2021-08-26.
  12. Williams, James S (2017-10-10). "Anne Wiazemsky obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 2021-08-26.