Gisèle Halimi at the Panthéon: Abortion and Terrorism as National Glories

France now honours not only baby killers, like Simone Veil but supporters of terrorism that killed 27,000 French soldiers and 6,000 French civilians.

From The European Conservative

By Hélène De Lauzun

Gisèle Halimi fits in quite perfectly with the progressive political agenda, uniting the feminist with the decolonial struggle: an excellent marker of the political neuroses of our time.

In the heart of the old Latin Quarter of Paris, the church of Sainte-Geneviève, built by the architect Soufflot just before the French Revolution, has since been transformed into a kind of republican temple dedicated to national glories. “To great men, the grateful fatherland,” can be read on its neoclassical pediment inspired by a Greek temple. Since its construction, the Republic has sent there the remains of personalities whose memory it intends to honour. The choice of the ‘lucky’ candidates often gives rise to vigorous polemics within French opinion. The latest candidate, the lawyer Gisèle Halimi, is no exception to the rule. 

The Panthéon currently houses ‘only’ six women—there are seventy-five men—but out of the women, one of them, Sophie Berthelot, is only there because she was buried alongside her beloved husband. In other words, this is a long way from parity. The French authorities have therefore been taking particular care in recent years to welcome women. 

In 2018, the minister and former deportee Simone Veil entered the temple in a display of gratitude for her decisive role in the decriminalisation of abortion. She gave her name to the law, passed in 1975, which made abortion legal in France. In 2021, the American-born singer and resistance fighter Josephine Baker was selected. Now the honour will be granted to the lawyer, Gisèle Halimi. 

Gisèle Halimi is not necessarily what one would spontaneously call an object of ‘national glory.’ She does, however, fit in quite perfectly with a progressive political agenda insofar as she unites in her person both the feminist and the decolonial struggle. The choice of pantheonisations is an excellent marker of the political neuroses of the time. 

Of French-Tunisian origin and born in Tunisia in 1927, from a very young age she rebelled against the traditional education received from her parents, distinguishing between girls and boys. She defied her mother very early on, a mother who, Gisèle Halimi explains, “did not love her;” a mother who “was the explanation for her whole approach.” The great revolutionaries often have scores to settle with their parents—a phenomenon of confounding banality. 

After graduating from high school in Tunis, Halimi left for the metropolis and studied law in Paris to become a lawyer. While North Africa was still under French administration, she campaigned for the independence of Tunisia and Algeria and defended the fighters of these two countries in court. She then became the main lawyer of the National Liberation Front (FLN), the terrorist and independence organisation that wanted to oust French presence during the Algerian war (1954-1962). She made a name for herself by denouncing the acts of torture committed by certain soldiers of the French army against FLN terrorists. But she also sadly distinguished herself by defending terrorists who were guilty of sordid massacres against French people from Algeria and Francophile Algerians—without the least scruple. 

One battle chases the other: as soon as the Algerian war was over, Gisèle Halimi focused on women’s rights, and in particular, access to abortion. In 1971, she signed the 343 Women’s Manifesto, a text published in Le Nouvel Observateur and written by the philosopher and Sartre’s lover Simone de Beauvoir, in which 343 women admitted to having had clandestine abortions and demanded the decriminalisation of abortion and free access to contraceptives. A year later, Gisèle Halimi distinguished herself at the Bobigny trial, involving a sixteen-year-old girl who had an abortion following a rape. Halimi obtained an acquittal for the girl and her accomplices and used the trial as a platform against the French law that criminalised abortion. Today, the Bobigny trial is considered to be one of the essential milestones in the evolution of French opinion, which led, in January 1975, to the vote on the Veil law, definitively decriminalising abortion in France.

Gisèle Halimi was an activist with all her soul, and considered that the duty of probity required of any lawyer ended where her fighting convictions began. In 1982, having become a member of Parliament, she succeeded in having the content of the lawyers’ oath modified by deleting the references to “respect for public authorities,” “good morals,” and “state security and public peace.” 

In this respect, Gisèle Halimi can certainly be counted among the figures of deconstruction. The crowning achievement of her career came when she was appointed French ambassador to UNESCO, then special adviser to the French delegation to the United Nations General Assembly. The continuity of her national commitment to international bodies which shared her struggles and her personal agenda is perfect.

There is a ‘shadow’ to this picture: Gisèle Halimi, born before World War II, did not really know how to ride the horse of the new minority struggles and wokeism. She repeatedly supported racist associations on the issue of the Islamic veil, which she saw above all as a tool for oppressing women, and spoke out very explicitly against surrogate motherhood, which she also saw as enslaving women’s bodies. But these occasionally ‘reactionary’ positions are not enough to tarnish her star among 21st-century feminists.

Today, the sacredness of Gisèle Halimi and her entry into the Pantheon seems to be the subject of consensus. As a feminist and decolonial icon, she has checked—almost—all the boxes. The historian Benjamin Stora, advisor to Emmanuel Macron on Algerian affairs, considers her inclusion in the Panthéon to be the perfect symbol of reconciliation between France and Algeria. This is precisely what makes Marine Le Pen, leader of the Rassemblement National deputies and former presidential candidate, scream, recalling that Gisèle Halimi was more than an advocate for Algerian independence. She was what is known in France as a ‘porteur de valises’ [carrier of suitcases], meaning that she did not hesitate to finance the terrorist activities of the FLN against the French army and the French government. 

Marine Le Pen said on France Inter on Thursday, March 9th, that

Gisèle Halimi was not only—after all, it was her right—an opponent of the war in Algeria. She was a supporter of the FLN terrorists against the French army. And consequently, this alone should prohibit her from entering the Panthéon.

Indeed, one wonders what kind of reconciliation we are talking about, under these conditions. 

There is no urgency, apparently. On the occasion of International Women’s Rights Day, President Macron announced that the process would indeed be “brought to a conclusion,” but that these things “take time.” Perhaps, with any luck, “time” will extend into oblivion, for it is very sad that a European nation should today place its glory in a person whose public actions were concentrated on the hatred of life and the hatred of the nation.