The actress and singer says she had to have an abortion clandestinely in her youth, due to the ban on abortion at the time. A chilling testimony
Line Renaud, born in 1928, lived a youth that preceded many advances in women’s rights and health. In a long interview published on Sunday March 21, 2021, she recounted her life to World. She talks about the women who inspired her and her great love, the composer Loulou Gasté, who died in 1995. A great love that never wanted children. When Line Renaud got pregnant, she decided to have an abortion, and the meeting was arranged by her husband. “Dreadful memory” , tells Line Renaud to the World: “A creepy address, a dark apartment, a knitter.” And then complications, fever and the onset of sepsis. A gynecologist is called urgently to practice “a live curettage on the dining room table” that is to say a medical method… but without anesthesia.
Other stars of the time, like Dalida, experienced the same kind of situation. She was never able to have children after her clandestine abortion. At the time, these took place in those we called “the knitters” or “the angel makers”. It is with Simone Veil and the law of January 17, 1975 that abortion is decriminalized. According to Franceinfo, in the seventies, a woman would die every day as a result of an illegal abortion.
This right has allowed women to freely dispose of their bodies and decide on their pregnancy, and it must be defended as fundamental. As Simone de Beauvoir said, “Never forget that it will only take a political, economic or religious crisis for the rights of women to be called into question.” This is what happened in Poland in January 2021, where a new law makes abortion almost impossible.