Politician led effort to legalise abortion
Simone Veil, French lawyer and politician, b July 13, 1927, Nice, France; m Antoine Veil, 3s; d June 30, 2017, Paris, France, aged 89.
Of all the insults thrown at Simone Veil during her campaign to legalise abortion in France in 1974, the most hurtful was the accusation that she was unleashing the biggest genocide since the deportation of French Jews to the Nazi death camps.
Health minister in the right-wing government of President Giscard d’Estaing, Veil wept in private, especially as her camp number from Auschwitz, 78651, was still branded on her arm, concealed underneath her Chanel sleeves. She succeeded in passing what is still known as Loi Veil (the Veil law) on January 17, 1975, which legalised abortion up to 10 weeks.
About 75 per cent of French people were now in favour of abortion reform, but the pro-life lobby had many allies within Giscard’s parliamentary coalition. During the debates on her bill, Veil was denounced as an ‘‘assassin’’; one opponent said, ‘‘Madame Minister, do you want to send children to the ovens?’’ Swastikas were painted on her car. Veil was unflinching.
She was renowned for seeing both sides of an argument, and for trying to win by persuasion. She spoke simply and bluntly, as though thinking aloud, and this won her respect. In a free vote, twothirds of the right opposed the bill, which was passed thanks to socialist and communist support.
Veil – only the second French woman since the war to hold full cabinet rank; Germaine Poinso-Chapuis was the first in 1947-48 – had succeeded in making her nation the first Mediterranean Roman Catholic country to legalise abortion.
According to opinion polls, Veil was for many years the most popular politician in France. She was tipped to become France’s version of ‘‘le dame fer’’ (the Iron Lady) and the press on both sides of the English Channel speculated on whether it would be her or Margaret Thatcher who would become the first woman to lead a western nation.
Veil had to be content with becoming the first president of the directly elected European parliament in 1979 - she was a passionate advocate of a united Europe as a result of her wartime experiences. A humanist and a rationalist, she always wore her hair in a chignon and some found her cool, crisp manner ‘‘schoolmistressy’’.
She belonged to no party, claiming that she was ‘‘on the right for some matters, on the left for others’’, and that she could equally well have accepted a post under the socialist government of President Mitterrand. All this endeared her to a French public generally mistrustful of its party politicians.
She was born Simone Annie Liline Jacob in Nice, daughter of an architect. It was a happy Jewish family – until the war. She completed her baccalaureate two days before her family’s deportation. For the rest of her life, she lived with the horror that giving the examiners her real name had led to the arrest of her family. Her parents and brother perished in the death camps.
Simone was sent to Auschwitz, where she caught typhus. She was among 25 per cent of the prisoners who survived the train journey transferring her to Belsen. On liberation, a British soldier guessed her age to be 40. She was 17. Veil returned to Paris with ‘‘a rage to live’’. In 1946 she married Antoine Veil, son of a JewishFrench industrialist. They met while studying law in Paris. The couple came to belong to the ‘‘Tout-Paris politique’’ of high-powered dinner-parties, where friends included Jacques Chirac. Simone bore three sons.
She found her professional life ‘‘very lonely’’ and longed for evenings at home, bringing family photograph albums up to date while her husband played Chopin on the piano. Antoine died in 2013.
As a young mother, Veil joined the civil service: she held posts in the Ministry of Justice, where she improved the living conditions of Algerian prisoners from the war of independence. In 1970, she was the first woman to be appointed secretary-general of the Conseil Superieur de la Magistrature.
Giscard appointed Veil as health minister on the recommendation of Chirac. She promptly drove through a bill to liberalise contraception and ensure that the Pill was paid for by social security. Her brief was later extended to include the family, and social security.
When in 1978 the latter piled up a titanic deficit, Veil risked her popularity by imposing a huge increase in contributions: she made the rich bear the brunt. Her anti-tobacco campaign made little headway – partly because the public knew that she was a chain-smoker, a habit she never cured, although she did cut down from 80 to 40 a day.
Later, she led the Gaullist list into the 1979 elections for the European parliament at Strasbourg, which chose her as its president. On her first day, she had to contend with a broadside from the Rev Ian Paisley because the Union Flag was flying upside down.
She proved tough and effective and no stooge of Paris, defying prime minister Raymond Barre’s government on EC budgetary matters. In 1982, to her chagrin, her mandate was not renewed (a rival Euro-coalition defeated her).
The Gaullist/Giscard electoral pacts with the Front National upset her deeply. She died content that Marine Le Pen was foiled in her attempt to win the French presidency by Emmanuel Macron, who paid Veil a glowing tribute.
She had a fierce temper and candidly admitted that ‘‘my character is becoming so disagreeable’’ as a result of ‘‘so much hard work’’. Veil stood down from the European Parliament in 1993. Britain made her an honorary dame in 1998.
She was appointed to the Grand Cross of the Legion d’honneur in 2012. Veil loved reading, particularly Henry James and Virginia Woolf.
She lamented the fact that she had so little time to escape into a book, although she carved out her own story as a classical heroine.
A popular saying in France went: ‘‘In the Middle Ages they used to say ‘Sleep citizens, the watch is on guard’. Now they say ‘Make love citizens, Simone is on guard’.’’