On the occasion of 50 years of the publication in the Obs of the Manifesto of the 343 of 1971 in favor of abortion, the magazine pays tribute to him this week in a dossier of 30 pages.

Cécile Prieur, managing editor, told on Europe 1 how the Obs, one of whose ex-employees is even at the origin of the manifesto, crossed the torrent of insults suffered by the newspaper to its exit.

INTERVIEW

Monday April 5 marked the 50th anniversary of the publication in the Obs of the 1971 343 Manifesto in favor of abortion.

Very famous women, like Simone de Beauvoir, and anonymous, revealed to have aborted there at the time illegally.

Cécile Prieur, managing editor of the magazine which this week celebrates the 50th anniversary of the manifesto, was the guest of Culture Médias on Europe 1. She looks back on how the Obs went through the events of the time, because the publication of the text elicited very extreme reactions.

The idea of ​​an Obs librarian

Reactions that were extremely virulent against the magazine not only because it was he who published it, but also because one of the magazine's employees was at the origin.

“The idea for the manifesto originated in the mind of Nicole Muchnik, who was a young librarian at the time. In 1971, she was completely outraged by the conditions of abortion in France and one day she had the idea, to popularize this idea, that famous women claim abortion. This is how the idea of ​​the manifesto was born. She then went to see the MLF (women's liberation movement) which found the Great idea. Together, they went to see Simone de Beauvoir and who wrote the little text ", relates Cécile Prieur.

"A smell of mass grave"

A very short text, and yet.

"The reactions were quite extreme. Le Nouvel Observateur received a lot of letters, testimonials from women who said they appreciated the manifesto and were happy that it was published, and many, many very negative letters and insults and insults. ", says the editor of the Obs.

"In the series of insulting testimonies, there was a certain Doctor PM, as one of our journalists recounts, who found this letter from the readers, who denounces for example 'these 343 bloodied left asses from which the smell of charnier. We were there with the level of verbal violence that the manifesto of the 343 could arouse. "

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Among the insults, women too.

“The Women's Liberation Movement was barely a year old; a lot of women had a very conservative culture. The Catholic Church was very strong. So a lot of women were obviously extremely shocked by the manifesto. infanticide, it was very serious, "recalls Cécile Prieur.

"We must not believe that abortion, its legalization, went smoothly."

But the press played a big role in the fight for the right to abortion, and the publication of this manifesto in the Obs in particular.

Why did the manifesto keep the name of the 343 bitches manifesto?

At no time does the word slut appear in the manifesto published by Le Nouvel Observateur.

So how come we're still talking about it with this insult?

As Cécile Prieur recalls, this name comes from a Charlie Hebdo front page following the publication of the Manifesto of 343, drawn by Cabu.

This One represents Michel Debré, then Minister of Defense, with a caption: "Who impregnated the 343 sluts of the manifesto?"

He replied: "It was for France".

This insult, "the famous sluts, which was attributed to the women of the 343 to denigrate them, the women of the manifesto took it on their own and they recovered it positively. They assumed to be these famous 343 sluts and this is how the name of the manifesto has remained ", explains Cécile Prieur.

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