Feminist Simone de Beauvoir on abortion:
“It is often the seducer himself who convinces the woman that she must rid herself of the child. Or he may have already abandoned her… Sometimes she declines to bear the infant not without regret… Men tend to take abortion lightly; they regard it as one of the numerous hazards imposed on women by malignant nature, but fail to realize fully the values involved. The woman who has recourse to abortion is disowning feminine values, her values… Her whole moral universe is being disrupted.”
….
After abortion women “learn to believe no longer in what men say… The one thing they are sure of is this rifled and bleeding womb, these shreds of crimson life, this child that is not there. It is at her first abortion that a woman begins to “know.” For many women the world will never be the same.”
Simone de Beauvoir. The Second Sex. (New York: Bantam books, 1952) from
Frederica Mathews-Green. Real Choices: Offering Practical, Life-Affirming Alternatives to Abortion (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Books, 1994) 18, 49
The text of the manifesto was written by Simone de Beauvoir.[1] It began (translated here into English):
One million women in France have an abortion every year.
Condemned to secrecy, they have them in dangerous conditions when this procedure, performed under medical supervision, is one of the simplest.
These women are veiled in silence.
I declare that I am one of them. I have had an abortion.
Just as we demand free access to birth control, we demand the freedom to have an abortion.[3]
Impact[edit]
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] (“Who got the 343 sluts [bitches] from the abortion manifesto pregnant?”) This drawing by Cabu gave the manifesto its nickname.
It was the inspiration for a February 3, 1973, manifesto by 331 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 ….[5]
Please read more about Simone de Beauvoir. It was she who brought legal abortion to France. Thank you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifesto_of_the_343