The Elysee Palace rejected on Monday the “trial” made by Serge Halimi against the national tribute that Emmanuel Macron will pay on Wednesday to his mother Gisèle Halimi, a feminist lawyer who died in 2020, which could also be an opportunity for the Head of State to speak out on the constitutionalization of abortion.
On the occasion of International Women’s Rights Day, the president will deliver a speech at the Palais de Justice in Paris, a place “steeped in history”, an adviser told reporters. His eldest son Jean-Yves Halimi, long supporter of a tribute to the Invalides, will also speak.
On the other hand, another son, the journalist Serge Halimi, dissociated himself from this initiative by affirming Sunday that he would not attend because the tribute intervenes “while the country is mobilized against a pension reform” that his mother would have fought.
March 8 “echoes all his fights”
Violaine Lucas, president of the association “Choose the cause of women”, founded by Gisèle Halimi and Simone de Beauvoir in 1971, expressed a similar position. March 8 “echoes all the fights that Gisèle Halimi led”, replied this adviser to the Elysée to justify this date. “This trial that is done engages only its authors and I refer them to their conscience,” he added.
“The President of the Republic, he does not link the news to the figure of Gisèle Halimi”, it would be “off topic”, he pleaded. According to this adviser, Emmanuel Macron will evoke “a figure who knew how to bring to life the ideals inherited from the Enlightenment”, and in particular his fights “against colonization and the war in Algeria”, “against the death penalty” or even for “the legalization of abortion.
While a legislative process is underway to enshrine in the Constitution the “right” or “freedom” of women to have recourse to voluntary termination of pregnancy, the Elysian adviser suggested being “very attentive to what will be said the President of the Republic” on this subject.
“Women’s Freedom”
The Senate voted in early February for the inclusion in the Constitution of the “freedom of women” to resort to abortion, reformulating a constitutional bill from the Assembly which initially referred to a “right”. The legislative path is still long: a constitutional text presented by parliamentarians must be approved in identical terms by the two chambers and then be submitted to a referendum.
Left-wing deputies and senators called on Emmanuel Macron, in a letter dated March 1, to take “the initiative for a constitutional bill” from the government, which could be approved in the last resort by the assembled Parliament. in Congress without requiring a referendum.