[Viewpoint] Bill to rehabilitate women convicted of illegal abortions before 1975: a memorial initiative.

Fifty years after Law no. 75-17 of January 17, 1975 on the voluntary interruption of pregnancy, on March 20, 2025, the Senate voted unanimously in favor of Proposition no. 1165, presented by Senator Laurence Rossignol, to rehabilitate women forced into clandestine abortions and by those who performed such abortions. While the freedom to have an abortion was guaranteed to women by the constitutional law of March 8, 2024, which amended the Constitution of the Vᵉ Republic for the 25ᵉ time, the violation of the rights of women who had abortions before the Veil law and suffered the consequences imposed by the criminal law then in force remains in history. Between 1870 and 1975, the date of the Veil law decriminalizing Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy (IVG), more than 11,660 people were convicted for performing or having recourse to an abortion.
If the enslavement of women's bodies and their freedom of choice has been a major instrument of a criminal policy of exclusion, the proposal can mean a correction of the past, rectified by contemporary history thanks to the intervention of historians, notably Michelle Perrot and Christelle Taraud. Proposition n° 1165 is now submitted to the National Assembly.