Simone Veil (1927-2017) dedicated her life to advocating for the underrepresented, becoming arguably the one person most responsible for advancing women’s legal rights in France in the 20th century.
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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan. And this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Today’s politician is synonymous with women’s health in France. After surviving the Holocaust, she dedicated her life to advocating for the underrepresented, becoming arguably the one person most responsible for advancing women’s legal rights in France in the 20th century.
Let’s talk about Simone Veil.
Simone was born on July 13, 1927. Her father was an architect. Her mother studied chemistry, but was forced to abandon that dream for marriage and motherhood. The family lived in Nice [NEECE, rhymes with “fleece”], so Andre could take advantage of construction projects on France’s southern coast.
Simone was the youngest of their four children.
The Jacobs were Jewish, though non-practicing. Andre, Simone’s father, was a World War I veteran, and highly patriotic. When the first rumblings of World War II began sweeping across Europe, Andre insisted that France would never capitulate to the Nazis.
In the spring of 1944, Simone completed a national exam that French students take at the end of high school. Two days later, she and her entire family were arrested.
Simone, her sister Madeleine, and their mother, Yvonne, were deported first to Auschwitz, and then Bergen-Belsen. Their brother, Jean, and father, Andre were put on a train convoy to Estonia. The fourth Jacob child, Denise, had joined the French Resistance at the start of the war. She was later sent to Ravensbruck.
Only the Jacob daughters survived. Madeleine and Simone remained together, even after their mother died of typhus. Jean and Andre disappeared. Denise was treated as a resistant, not as a Jew, and was among the first to be liberated.
After the war, Simone returned to her education, eventually earning a diploma in law and political studies. In 1946, she married Antoine Veil. Together, they had three sons.
But in 1952, Simone was dealt another blow: the sudden death of her sister, Madeleine, whom she called, “Milou,” in a car accident. Simone and Milou had been through hell together -- concentration camps, the death of their mother, the difficult re-entry into French society. Milou’s death was devastating.
Two years later, Simone sat for, and passed, the extremely competitive national exam to become a magistrate. In her career that followed, Simone often served as a voice, as a support system, for those who had no one else on their side.
In 1957, she took a job at the National Penitentiary Administration. While there, Simone advocated for female prisoners, who had been forced to endure especially repressive conditions. During the Algerian War of Independence, Simone pushed for the transfer of female prisoners from Algeria to France, amid stories of abuse. She housed them together, and enabled them to pursue an education.
In 1974, Simone was appointed Minister of Health by newly minted Prime Minister Jacques Chirac. The first woman Minister in France’s history, Simone pushed through two groundbreaking laws: the first, which passed in December 1974, facilitated access to contraception. The second legalized abortion.
As a historically Catholic country, France’s relationship with abortion was fraught, to say the least. In the Middle Ages, it had been declared a cardinal sin. During the French revolution, it was legalized. With the arrival of the Napoleonic code in 1810, it was re-criminalized. In 1939, it was permitted if the pregnancy was life-threatening. During World War II, it was declared a capital crime, punishable by death.
By the time Simone introduced her law in 1974, illegal abortion rates were high. More and more French women were traveling to the UK, where abortion had been legalized nearly a decade earlier.
In her now-famous address to a National Assembly -- most of whom were men -- Simone said, “We can no longer shut our eyes to the 300,000 abortions that each year mutilate the women of this country, trample on its laws and humiliate or traumatise those who undergo them.”
What followed her hour-long speech was a torrent of abuse. Critics from both sides levelled anti-semitic attacks against Simone. She was accused of supporting a new Holocaust. Swastikas were painted on her car and front door. “Madame Minister,” someone asked, “Do you want to send children to the ovens?” But Simone remained firm. She refused to call abortion murder. And with support from the left-wing opposition, the bill passed in early 1975. It became known as La Loi Veil -- Veil’s Law.
Simone remained a Health Minister until 1979. She dedicated the second half of her career to European unity.
In 1979, she was elected the first President of the European Parliament, a role she held for three years. She served on a number of committees over the next two decades, including the Committee on the Environment and the Subcommittee for Human Rights.
Throughout the 1990s, Simone advocated for the disabled, those who were HIV-positive, and mothers of young children.
In 2008, Simone entered the Academie Francaise. The council, which has been in existence since the 1600s, holds forty members at a time. They’re called The Immortals. Membership lasts for life. Simone was the sixth woman ever selected. Engraved on her sword, which is given to every member, are three lines:
The motto of the French republic -- Liberty, Equality, Fraternity --, the motto of the European Union -- Unity in diversity --, and her Auschwitz number.
Simone died on June 30, 2017, two weeks before her 90th birthday. She lived an extraordinary life filled with tragedy and incredible accomplishment.
This past month, we’ve been talking all about politicians. Tune in on Monday for the first day of our next theme: STEMinists. For more on why we’re doing what we’re doing, check out our newsletter, Womannica Weekly. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram @encyclopediawomannica and follow me directly on twitter @jennymkaplan.
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Talk to you on Monday!