Remarkable victory in abortion battle

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33719, 17 December 1974, Page 7

Remarkable victory in abortion battle

(By

ANNE HEAD,

of the Observer Foreign News Service)

PARIS. Simone Veil. France’s Minister of Health, has won a remarkable battle in persuading the National Assembly to take lenrst steps to liberalise the laws on abortion. After three days and nights of often heated debates, the Assembly has adopted, by votes for and 189 against, the Government’s draft bill on abortion.

Without the 184 Communists and Socialists who voted en bloc for the bill, it would have been a serious disavowal of a project President Giscard a Estaing personally hopes to see adopted by both the Assembly and the Senate. The draft bill went to the Senate last Friday and will return to the National Assembly for its second reading. Mrs Veil, a 47-year-o.ld mother of three sons, explained in her opening speech presenting the bill that President Giscard d’Estaing had considered it should be presented by the Minister and “by a woman." A Socialist deputy. Mr Pierre Mauroy, has called Mrs Veil “the only man in the Government” and her unruffled determination to see the bill through was clear from the beginning of the debate. Mrs Veil is a magistrate and since 1970 she has been in charge of the administration of the Higher Council of Magistrates, the first woman to hold the job. At 17 she was deported to a German concentration camp and spent three years there. Her parents and a brother died in Nazi camps. She studied law and has a diploma from the

'Paris Institute of Political I Studies. She is married to I Antoine Veil. DirectorliGeneral of the airline U.T.A. 1 She started her political > career in 1957 as an adviser - at the Ministry of Justice. ! For a time she was a memj ber of the Union of Magistrates and in 1969 was tech•inical adviser to Mr Rene Pleven, then Minister of Justice. But these administrative - posts clearly did not satisfy i her political ambitions. j MEETING PLACE Her family having grown 1 up, she devoted more and t more time to cultivating her , relations with the dignitaries • of the Fifth Republic and her 1 house became a meeting i place for the political elite. ; She was present, always disflcreetly, at all major official functions. She was the first »i woman to be on the board of i directors of the State-run - television and radio network, f Her appointment as Minister r.of Health was greeted as a 5 deft and intelligent move by - President Giscard d’Estaing. t The draft bill for a change - in the abortion laws was first i presented to Parliament in t December, 1973, by the Minjlister of Justice, Mr Jean Tai*-

Itinger. Despite his impassioned plea the bill was rejected and returned to the! (special commission for fur-! -ther debate. i The present Minister of! Justice. Mr Jean Lecanuet, is] known to oppose any change j in the law and he certainly raised no objection when the! I President decided to have the ( bill defended by Mrs Veil, j WRITTEN REQUEST There is no doubt that only! la person of the stature of; Mrs Veil could have pushed I the bill through. In a con-I jservative and still profoundly! Catholic country the law is( revolutionary. It would allow j I any Frenchwoman, married' !or single, over 18 to have an, (abortion in the first 10 weeks! lof a pregnancy. She must! I visit a doctor twice and (make a written request for; the abortion and it must be; ;carried out in an authorised; (public or private hospital. Enormous pressure was put; ion the deputies to reject the bill. The Vatican published its I condemnation of abortion the; day the debate opened. The; I Council of the Order of Physicians sent a circular letiter to all doctors, condemning abortion and claiming it (was akin to infanticide. Mrs Veil roundly told the Council of the Order of Physicians that “the Council has to obey the laws of the Republic” and she reminded the (Assembly that the order was ' founded in 1940 “according to the perspectives of the period,” and in fact only accounted for 30 per cent of the medical profession. To the general indignation of most of the Assembly, certain Gaullist deputies accused Mrs Veil of attempting to legalise euthanasia or, even worse, create a “Nazi racism,” and one accused her of wanting to send thousands to the gas chambers. She made no allusion to her own past, but it was on everyone’s mind as she castigated

“the attitude of intellectual terrorism of those who had flooded the National Assembly with vile publicity which showed little respect for. a cause being defended with measure and conviction.” During the 25 hours of speeches and debates, Simone (Veil’s constant elegant presence seemed in some way to (make up for the absurd lack lof women deputies. There I are only nine women among: the 490 members of the National Assembly who were here discussing the most intimate details of a woman’s life. Mrs Veil said that in spite of her personal wish that the decision to have an abor- ■ tion should be taken by the ' couple concerned, she made l it clear that it was the woman alone whose decision counted. In the law that has ; been accepted in its first read--1 ing it is the woman alone who is responsible.