Image: Gisele Halimi statue
On 18 July Paris installed the first of ten statues of pioneering French women displayed during the 2024 Olympics in a northern district of the capital. The ten statues featured as part of the French capital’s boundary-breaking opening ceremony for the Summer Games in July last year. The women include Simone Veil, who spearheaded the legalisation of abortion in France, and the feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir.
A golden representation of the campaigning lawyer Gisele Halimi, who was also active around legal abortion law and policy was set up in the capital’s northern La Chapelle district as well. Halimi, a Tunisian-born French lawyer who died five years ago aged 93, earned national fame for her role in a 1972 trial defending a minor who had an abortion after a rape. She ensured not only that the young woman, Marie-Claire Chevalier, was acquitted but also helped swing public opinion on the issue of reproductive rights. She was one of the most prominent of 343 women who in 1971 signed an open letter saying that they had had abortions.
Michele Zaoui, an architect working for the city of Paris, said the plan was to keep the statues in the neighbourhood for at least a few more years until the opening of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. During artistic director Thomas Jolly’s Olympics opening ceremony, the statues surged up from the waters of the Seine.
SOURCE: The Mercury, by Stephane De Sakutin. 19 July 2025.