#Gisèle Halimi

[lupitovi]

Ernest Pignon-Ernest - Avortement 1975

Marie-Claire se réveille brutalement. L'angoisse l'étouffe. Elle rejette son drap. Un liquide poisseux l'inonde, un sang noir s'écoule entre ses cuisses. Elle s'affole. Elle appelle. Dans le lit voisin, ses petites sœurs dorment. Dans la chambre à côté, Michelle, sa mère. Elle ne l'entend pas. Marie-Claire glisse du lit. Elle sanglote. Elle va mourir. La sonde l'a sans doute déchirée. Elle se couche sur le sol. Elle n'ose plus bouger. Elle s'efforce de crier plus fort. Les petites bougent un peu, dans le lit voisin. Elle crie. Et Michelle, réveillée en sursaut, entre dans la chambre, allume la grosse lampe du plafond. Sa fille est là, allongée, couverte de sang. Son visage gris, son corps immobile lui font craindre le pire. Marie-Claire gémit doucement. Pas de téléphone. Personne à son secours. Un taxi ? Mais où ? Mais combien ? Une couverture. S'habiller vite, très vite. Porter cette enfant - son enfant - qui saigne, dans la nuit. « Tu n'as pas honte, à ton âge ? » Voix mauvaise du médecin des urgences. II approche les instruments. « Tu n'as pas honte : tu vas voir. Tu vas voir. » Douleur atroce. Va-t-elle mourir ? Devant le tribunal correctionnel de Bobigny, j'ai dit au juge pour la première fois de ma vie d'avocate que je me sentais, « toutes causes confondues, avocate et femme. Femme et avocate, car, messieurs, je suis une avocate qui a avortée ». J'ai dit aussi que je n'avais jamais vu condamner des femmes de banquiers. Ou de politiciens, ou de vedettes, ou leurs maîtresses. Au banc des accusés, toujours les plus déshéritées, toujours les plus vulnérables. Le président à l'avorteuse: « Le spéculum, l'avez-vous mis dans la bouche de Marie-Claire ? » J'ai bondi : « Regardez-nous et regardez-vous. Quatre hommes pour juger quatre femmes. Quatre hom mes pour décrire nos utérus, peser nos désespoirs, décider de nos libertés ! » Le délégué du conseil de l'ordre - procédure disciplinaire - accuse : « Vous avez porté atteinte à la dignité de la robe d'avocat. » Je proteste, j'explique , je suis une femme. « Non, une avocate n'avorte pas ! » Le conseil de l'ordre sanctionna. C'était en 1972. Puis vint la loi de 1975 - autorisant I'IVG (interruption volontaire de grossesse). Et d'autres encore qui suspendirent puis abolirent celle de 1920 et sa répression. Les femmes ont conquis une liberté: celle de donner (ou non) la vie. Mais l'exercice de ce choix devient de plus en plus difficile, faute de moyens. Les centres d'IVG s'éloignent, ferment. On est passés d'une liberté reconnue à un droit toléré, puis à un droit abstrait sans contenu. Or une liberté sans les moyens de cette liberté, est-ce encore la liberté ? On le voit, on l'entend, la souffrance revient et le combat continue.

— Gisèle Halimi - Malheur de femme 

[satinea]

Ne vous résignez jamais...

Gisèle Halimi

[dirklagast]

rue Gisèle HALIMI straat

[ordalya]

Gisèle Halimi : "La liberté, c'est le choix"

"Gisèle Halimi : "La liberté, c'est le choix"" sur https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/podcasts/radioscopie-par-jacques-chancel/gisele-halimi-je-me-bats-pour-le-droit-de-la-femme-a-choisir-ses-maternites-8963786 via @radiofrance

Si vous avez une heure.

[mithridas]

« Aujourd'hui, nous allons vous parler d'une figure majeure de notre histoire récente, une figure majeure puisqu'elle est même au Panthéon, je parle bien sûr de Gisèle Halimi. Bon en fait, elle n'est pas au Panthéon. On parle de la mettre au Panthéon depuis sa mort en 2020, mais elle n'y est pas encore, mais elle a quand même reçu un hommage national du président Macron en personne. Mais tout ça à divisé pas mal de monde. Autant le combat de Gisèle Halimi sur l'avortement ou pour faire reconnaître le viol comme crime, ça fait plutôt consensus, même si les actes ne suivent pas derrière. Par contre, la lutte anticoloniale, c'est déjà plus compliqué. » Pour comprendre ce combat à la fois féministe et anticolonial de Gisèle Halimi, il faut revenir sur sa vie, et ses combats.

[berlinauslander]

In 1962, Gisèle Halimi, a French lawyer for several Algerians who had been brutally raped and tortured in prison, wrote in exasperation, "The words were the same stale clichés: ever since torture had been used in Algeria there had always been the same words, the same expression of indigna-tion, the same signatures to public protests, the same promises. This automatic routine had not abolished one set of electrodes or water-hoses; nor had it in any remotely effective way curbed the power of those who used them." Simone de Beauvoir, writing on the same subject, concurred: "To protest in the name of morality against 'excesses' or 'abuses' is an error which hints at active complicity. There are no 'abuses' or 'excesses' here, simply an all-pervasive system."24

Her point was that the occupation could not be done humanely; there is no humane way to rule people against their will. There are two choices, Beauvoir wrote: accept occupation and all the methods required for its en-forcement, "or else you reject, not merely certain specific practices, but the greater aim which sanctions them, and for which they are essential." The same stark choice is available in Iraq and Israel/Palestine today, and it was the only option in the Southern Cone in the seventies. Just as there is no kind, gentle way to occupy people against their determined will, there is no peaceful way to take away from millions of citizens what they need to live with dignity —which is what the Chicago Boys were determined to do. Robbery, whether of land or a way of life, requires force or at least its credible threat; it's why thieves carry guns, and often use them. Torture is sickening, but it is often a highly rational way to achieve a specific goal; indeed, it may be the only way to achieve those goals. Which raises the deeper question, one that so many were incapable of asking at the time in Latin America. Is neoliberalism an inherently violent ideology, and is there something about its goas that demands this cycle of brutal political cleansing, followed by human rights cleanup operations?

One of the most moving testimonies on this question comes from Sergio Tomasella, a tobacco farmer and secretary-general of Argentina's Agrarian Leagues, who was tortured and imprisoned for five years, as were his wife and many friends and family members.* In May 1990, Tomasella took the overnight bus to Buenos Aires from the rural province of Corrientes in order to add his voice to the Argentine Tribunal against Impunity, which was hearing testimony on human rights abuses during the dictatorship.

Tomasella's testimony was different from the others. He stood before the urban audience in his farming clothes and work boots and explained that he was the casualty of a long war, one between poor peasants who wanted pieces of land to form cooperatives and the all-powerful ranchers who owned half the land in his province. "The line is continuous —those who took the land from the Indians continue to oppress us with their feudal structures." He insisted that the abuse he and his fellow members of the Agrarian Leagues suffered could not be isolated from the huge economic interests served by the breaking of their bodies and destruction of their activist net-works. So instead of naming the soldiers who abused him, he chose to name the corporations, both foreign and national, that profit from Argentina's continued economic dependence. "Foreign monopolies impose crops on us, they impose chemicals that pollute our earth, impose technology and ideol-ogy. All this through the oligarchy which owns the land and controls the pol-itics. But we must remember —the oligarchy is also controlled, by the very same monopolies, the very same Ford Motors, Monsanto, Philip Morris. It's the structure we have to change. This is what I have come to denounce.

That's all.".

The auditorium erupted in applause. Tomasella concluded his testimony with these words: "I believe that truth and justice will eventually triumph. It will take generations. If I am to die in this fight, then so be it. But one day we will triumph. In the meantime, I know who the enemy is, and the enemy knows who I am, too.'

The Chicago Boys' first adventure in the seventies should have served as a warning to humanity: theirs are dangerous ideas. By failing to hold the ideology accountable for the crimes committed in its first laboratory, this subculture of unrepentant ideologues was given immunity, freed to scour the world for its next conquest. These days, we are once again living in an era of corporatist massacres, with countries suffering tremendous military violence alongside organized attempts to remake them into model "free market" economies; disappearances and torture are back with a vengeance. And once again the goals of building free markets, and the need for such brutality, are treated as entirely unrelated.

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Gisèle Halimi

Lawyer and human rights activist Gisèle Halimi was born in 1927 in La Goulette, Tunisia. Halimi first rose to prominence in 1960 representing Djamila Boupacha, an Algerian activist who had been tortured and sexually assaulted Boupacha was eventually pardoned and released. In her work as a lawyer, Halimi fought for justice for torture victims in places like Tunisia and Algeria. She also played a crucial role in the decriminalization of abortion in France. In an influential case, Halimi defended a 16-year-old girl who had been charged for getting an abortion after a sexual assault. Not only did she secure an acquittal for her client, but the trial also helped change public opinion in France.

Gisèle Halimi died in 2020 at the age of 93.

[detournementsmineurs]

Hommage à 10 grandes figures féminines, françaises et inspirantes émergeant de la Seine :

Christine de Pizan (1364-1431)

Jeanne Barret (1740-1807)

Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793)

Louise Michel (1830-1905)

Alice Guy (1873-1968)

Alice Milliat (1884-1957)

Paulette Nardal (1896-1985)

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)

Simone Veil (1927-2017)

Gisèle Halimi (1927-2020)

[margotton-blog]

Mesdames Simone Veil et Gisèle Halimi

[tournevole]

L'avenir boîtera s'il n'est construit que de mains d'hommes et d'attente de femmes.

Gisèle Halimi, avocate, femme politique Une farouche liberté, 2020

[masr356]

Decades after a landmark rape trial in France, the Pelicot case shows 'shame has changed sides' | masr356.com

Lawyer Agnès Fichot in Paris on October 5, 2024. ANAIS BARELLI FOR M Agnès Fichot will never forget that day in 1977 when, just a few years out of law school, she picked up the phone to call the office of Gisèle Halimi, France’s most renowned lawyer. The choice was a natural one: She wanted to work with her, it was as simple as that. She admired Halimi’s courage, talent and audacity. She…

[maddiesbookshelves]

I guess 2025 is the year I learn more about feminism and the history of women's rights in France?

In case you didn't see my previous post, this is about the 1972's "Bobigny trials", where Gisèle Halimi (a lawyer and important figure of feminism in France) represented first Marie-Claire Chevalier for getting an abortion following her rape (which was illegal at the time in France, under any circumstances), and a month later Marie-Claire's mother, Michèle Chevalier, as well as 3 other women who helped her get the abortion. Gisèle Halimi's plea became absolutely iconic and those trials set a precedent: they helped push forward the decriminalisation of abortions, which happened in 1975 thanks to another huge figure of feminism in France, Simone Veil

So this graphic novel comes as a complement to Gisèle Halimi's plea, that I read a few days ago. This is more about the trials themselves and it was really interesting!

[leafatlas]

Decades after a landmark rape trial in France, the Pelicot case shows 'shame has changed sides'

Lawyer Agnès Fichot in Paris on October 5, 2024. ANAIS BARELLI FOR M Agnès Fichot will never forget that day in 1977, just a few years after graduating from law school, when she picked up the phone to call the lawyer’s office. Gisèle HalimiFrance’s most famous lawyer. The decision was natural: He wanted to work with him, it was that simple. He admired Halimi’s courage, talent and daring. He…