Seventy-six deputies of the majority asked Emmanuel Macron this Friday for the pantheonization of Gisèle Halimi. This request comes on the occasion of the international day against violence against women and the day after a vote by the Assembly for the constitutionalization of voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG).
“In too many countries, women’s rights are collapsing a little more each day under the weight of growing conservatism and obscurantism”, writes Renaissance MP for Gironde Sophie Panonacle and 75 of her colleagues, signatories of a letter to the Head of State. They ask that “Gisèle Halimi can be the seventh woman in the Pantheon”, and can “join her wrestling sister Simone Veil”.
“Gisèle Halimi was one of those to whom we owe so much. Brilliant lawyer, feminist activist and former MP, the one for whom injustice was intolerable, dedicated her life to defending the poor, the oppressed and women”, underline the parliamentarians. The elected officials, from the three groups of deputies constituting the presidential camp (Renaissance, Horizons, MoDem), salute “his unalterable courage” and “all of his humanist struggles”.
His positions on Algeria sometimes considered too divisive
Lawyer, politician and writer, Gisèle Halimi, who died on July 28, 2020 at the age of 93, made her life a fight for women’s rights, marked by a resounding trial in 1972. She then defended, before the Bobigny Criminal Court (Seine-Saint-Denis), in the Paris region, Marie-Claire Chevalier, a minor accused of having had an abortion after being the victim of a rape. She obtained the release of the young woman and managed to mobilize public opinion, paving the way for the decriminalization of abortion in early 1975.
Elected MP in 1981, she continued the fight in the Assembly, this time for the reimbursement of voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG), finally voted in 1982. She was also one of the main voices for the defense activists of the National Liberation Front (FLN) and denounced the use of torture by French soldiers in Algeria.
Requested on several occasions by feminist associations and political leaders, its pantheonization has come up against reluctance in recent years at the Elysée, because of its positions on the Algerian war and its defense of militants of the FLN, deemed too divisive, according to members of the president’s entourage.