This documentary on abortion on France 5 shows that those who had illegal abortions were mainly mothers

IVG – “ Just listen to women “. This famous sentence, pronounced by Simone Veil on November 26, 1974 before the National Assembly to defend the legalization of abortion, is also the title of a documentary, broadcast this Tuesday, January 14 at 9:05 p.m. on France 5. This film, made to mark the 50th anniversary of the Veil law, recalls that the majority of women having recourse to clandestine abortions at the time were mothers.

In October 2023, the INA launched a call for testimonies in mainland France and the overseas territories. In total, the institute received 400 responses from women who had clandestine abortions before the Veil law, promulgated in January 1975. But also from their loved ones and those who performed the abortion. The film particularly highlights this reality: while it also gives a voice to women who became pregnant at a very young age due to ignorance of contraception, three-quarters of the women concerned already had children.

Because although the pill and the IUD were legalized in 1967, access to them remained very uncertain. It is estimated that 800,000 women undergo clandestine abortions each year. “ Women then refuse to reproduce the model of their own mothers, who often gave birth to around ten children. », explains director Sonia Gonzales, who takes as an example that of her grandmother, Clothilde, who had an abortion at 30, when she was already the mother of two children.

“I see my mother determined that this will not succeed”

For these women, it is impossible to complete a new pregnancy, whether for practical, financial, psychological or physical reasons. Catherine was 17 years old in 1965 when her mother, who was 42 and already had two children, asked her to help her have a clandestine abortion.

« We live on the 6th floor and we have a small balcony. And my mother walks onto this balcony and says to me: I just have to go over, relates this woman who is now 76 years old, facing the camera. I tell her “Mom, stop”. I can still see myself pulling it and closing the door. I see my mother determined that this will not succeed. I see it, I feel it, I know it… » She will have to assist him in this ordeal.

But his mother faces, during the night, the most common complication during these home abortions: hemorrhage. Catherine goes to find a doctor who lives in the building. Seeing his condition, “ he says nothing and he acts “. His mother is taken to the hospital. “ She would tell me later that she had aborted eight times. “, she confides.

“Something had to be done”

Denise was a trader and mother of four children when she became pregnant in 1973, at the age of 36. Neither she nor her husband want this pregnancy to continue: the family lives crowded together in a room in the back room of their business. She will make the decision, because she has the means, to go and have an abortion in England, where it has been legal since 1967.

Colette is the mother of 18-month-old twins when she becomes pregnant again. Her first delivery was very difficult, by cesarean section. She does not feel physically or psychologically capable of having a new child. It’s 1965. “I said to myself: ‘If it turns out, I could even die, if the birth goes badly, and leave two little orphans.’ No, it couldn’t happen like that, something had to be done.”she remembers.

Alongside her husband, she is preparing to experience a “adventure worthy of a spy film”. Because since the 1920 law, women who have abortions have faced a heavy fine, and those who help them face up to 5 years in prison. Doctors also risk being removed from the profession by the Council of the Order, so much so that most refuse to intervene.

« CWhat was terrible was the curettage”

The doctor she and her husband contact to carry out the illegal abortion responds with a simple car registration number, written on a page torn from a notepad, with a meeting time at the train station. from Rennes. “ I would have taken all the risks, I would have done anything”confides Colette.

When they leave the station, he puts them in his car and takes them to a city. “ It was a lady who welcomed us into her apartment”she says, as if it were yesterday. It is on a table that the doctor will carry out the abortion, using candles of different sizes which he inserts into her uterus to open it little by little.

« What was terrible was the curettageremembers Colette. To avoid infection, he had to scrape the entire inside of the uterus with a bowl and that was horrible. » Once the operation is completed, she feels immense relief. Other women testify in the documentary of the “ immeasurable pain » of these raw curettages, often carried out without any prior explanation. Christine’s husband still hears, decades later, his wife “ crier ».

Some came close to death, others did not survive. “ At the time, around three women died every day from the consequences of illegal abortion. », recalls the documentary. The director’s grandmother, Clothilde, died in March 1968 from an infection and kidney failure, complications due to her clandestine abortion. In the family, it was said for years that she had suffered from peritonitis. A family lie revealed years later.

What emerges from these testimonies, coming from women who were sometimes minors at the time of the events, is their loneliness and their distress in this ordeal. So many years later, the suffering is still present. Some have lifelong consequences. Despised and often abused by the medical profession, their word is precious.