Bobigny 1972 retraces the events and the “abortion trial” against Marie-Claire Chevalier and her mother. It is the trial against a raped girl, denounced by her rapist, that Gisèle Halimi will return to history. A decisive trial for the advancement of women’s rights.
Moving from the trial to the past, mixing the life of Gisèle Halimi with the fight of this young girl, Marie-Claire Chevalier, to access abortion at the risk of her life, this comic goes beyond the simple transcription of the Bobigny trial.
A justice of men
This trial is the image of “human justice”. The symbol is striking. Three men, three judges, facing three women, three guilty people.
Gisèle Halimi’s argument is mainly based on two things. First, it denounces justice given and orchestrated by men. Then, she denounces a class injustice; with different rights – in fact – between bourgeois women who can have abortions in clinics abroad, and women deprived of everything, who only have the right to knitting needles.
Mr. Prosecutor… Does it seem improbable to you that a 15-year-old girl does not file a complaint for rape?
Debates that still echo after the “Metoo” waves. Gisèle Halimi forcefully denounces this questioning of women’s words; but also points to ignorance of the consequences of patriarchy.
Did you put the speculum in your mouth?
In this process, it hovers like a form of obscurantism. Thus, the violence of the moment is all the more exacerbated by a judgment that goes beyond abortion. We perceive there a degraded form of morality. Be a good mother, a good wife, have a well-kept home. This set of precepts from religion would justify, for judges, that abortion cannot be performed.
Women’s equality
The main driving force of the brilliant lawyer remains the class struggle. Because yes, bourgeois women who wish to have an abortion can. Never has a woman “of this rank” been summoned to trial. Delphine Seyrig, Simone De Beauvoir and Claude Servan-Schreiber parade. They all assume and say it loud and clear, they have never been worried, because they are bourgeois women.
You always condemn the same… The “Mme Chevalier”
Women without money, without relationships, are condemned, and harshly. Restoring equality between women and protecting the most vulnerable is the heart of the fight for abortion.
This trial, which made history, opened the media gap for the legalization of abortion. We owe a lot to these Ms. Chevalier who fought for this right. The recent constitutionalization of abortion strongly reminds us of this victory for feminists.
It also reminds us that the battle is not over. First for the effective right to abortion, but also for other feminist struggles.
