The bronze sculpture, symbolically surrounded by "Marie Curie" roses, was installed a few steps from the hemicycle where Ms. Veil had defended her text as Minister of Health, in the face of brutal hostility from her opponents.

"Certainly, she was not a member of the National Assembly, but her voice does not sound less unforgettable" at the Palais Bourbon, said the President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, in front of dozens of guests. , including the son of the former minister, Pierre-François Veil.

The Veil law decriminalizing abortion, voted in the Assembly on November 29, 1974 and promulgated in January 1975, had given rise to a stormy debate, "one of the toughest in the Fifth Republic", underlined Ms. Braun -Pivet.

"This moment in our political and parliamentary history profoundly transformed French society", she added, calling for vigilance in the face of the challenges "to a right that we thought was guaranteed", observed in other countries like the United States or Poland.

It is to protect this right to abortion in France that the National Assembly voted on November 25 in favor of its inclusion in the Constitution.

But the road is still long to obtain it, in particular because of the essential approval of the Senate, which rejected in October a text in this direction.

The President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet and Pierre-François Veil, son of Simone Veil, during the inauguration of the bust of Simon Veil in the gardens of the National Assembly, on November 29, 2022 in Paris STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN POOL/AFP

"I am convinced that such a right can and must be enshrined in our Constitution. We did it for the abolition of the death penalty, now irreversible, let's do it for the free choice of women", said Ms. Braun -Pivet.

Simone Veil died in 2017 at the age of 89.

A survivor of Auschwitz, she was notably a magistrate and several times a minister.

She was also the first woman to preside over the European Parliament.

The sculpture installed in the Assembly is the work of the artist Sissy Piana.

Financed by the "Foundation for Strasbourg", it is part of a series of busts to be placed in places that have marked the life of Simone Veil.

Another copy has already been inaugurated at the headquarters of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

© 2022 AFP