Women In Action Series - Simone Veil

 

My next post in the Women in Action series is Simone Veil. Simone was born into a French Jewish family in July of 1927.  She once said being Jewish was never a problem. Her father told her that for cultural reasons rather than religious ones, if the Jewish people were to remain the chosen ones, it was because they were the people of the Book, the people of thinking and writing. 

The family were living in Nice when Germany invaded France. They managed to avoid deportation since Nice and been included in the Italian occupation zone. But when the round up of Jews in France intensified, the family split up and the 16 year old Simone went to Lyon to finish her education. She was arrested there in 1944 on the day of her graduation, along with the rest of her family, and sent to a concentration camp.

Only Simone and one sister Denise, survived the camps. 

After the war, she graduated from the Faculty of Law of Paris and in 1954 became a magistrate and worked in the Ministry of Justice where she improved the conditions and treatment of female prisoners.   She eventually went on to become Director of Civil Affairs, where she improved women's rights and status in France including giving women the right to parental control in family legal matters and adoptive rights. Areas that previously had been restrictive to women.

She became Minister of Health in France in 1974 and achieved the passing of two important laws. The first was the right for women to have access to contraception. The second, passed in 1975 and called the Veil Law, legalised medical abortion in France. Simone endured aggressive personal attacks by those opposed to legalising abortion, but she refused to back down. 

She was the first female President of the European Parliament, elected in 1979. She was active in both government and cultural affairs for many years after.

Simone died at her home in France in 2017.