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Simone Veil

by Lilou Levallois from Ouistreham in France

As my hero, I decided to choose a heroine : Simone Veil, a French stateswoman. First of all, I will talk about her personal life and then, why she is considered a hero to my eyes. 

Simone Veil was born in 1927 and used to live with her two parents and her brother in Nice. Her father was an architect and her mother stopped her studies of chemistry after they both got married. Later, Simone wrote in her autobiography that her religion was secular: she and her family were Jewish. Unfortunately, at the age of sixteen she got arrested the following day of the Bac and was deported by Nazis to Auschwitz Birkenau with her family too. This deportation happened during the the second World War and is called the "Shoah". One year later she lost her dad, her mom and her brother in this horrific event. But, instead of crying over her loss, she integrated Science Po in Paris only six months later! Soon she got married and gave birth to three boys. Then, she worked at a penitential administration and became Minister of Health between 1974 and 1979. In 1974, so her first year as a minister, she made a famous speech on favor of abortion also called "voluntary interruption of pregnancy". When she talked of her bill about woman's right, she was in front of a commission composed of 98% of men. 

This is why she is my heroine: she surely had a lot of pain after what happened in Germany but she continued to believe in her convictions. She achieved to convince a group of men to vote for something they would never experience only with the strength of her words. Moreover, this law helped thousands, maybe millions of women who wanted to stop their pregnancy because of different causes: sexual assault, danger for the mother. Plus, when a woman decided to have an abortion, she had to do it clandestinely. Today, this law enables her to do it with doctors in a professional way. Simone was loved by French people and was voted the favorite female personality.

Page created on 11/13/2018 5:46:40 PM

Last edited 11/14/2018 4:18:23 PM

The beliefs, viewpoints and opinions expressed in this hero submission on the website are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs, viewpoints and opinions of The MY HERO Project and its staff.