Le spéculum, la canule et le miroir

The promulgation of the law on abortion in 1975 was a major turning point in women's history: the State finally succeeded in regulating abortion providers. Making the procedure an exclusive prerogative of doctors, the 1975 Law was a return to order. It closes a phase of claimed appropriation of abortion knowledge by ordinary women. How can it be explained that, at a time in history when the control of abortion by the social group of women was within reach, this possibility was so quickly cut short?

To elucidate this enigma, Lucile Ruault looks at the Movement for the Liberty of Abortion and Birth Control (MLAC), and in particular at the unknown action of dissident groups that continued to practice vacuum aspirations until 1984. By showing that the constitution of abortion as a health issue was a hard-fought area, this historical ethnography holds together the medicalization of abortion and the resistance to this process through a practice led by lay activists, in a feminist sense.