journals

At the BnF: 

• Looked through La Croix Jurassienne for anything on the Bobigny trial or on abortion. Despite the fact that it is a local newspaper there was a large article on the front page about he Bobigny trial. It was only one in November but it is significant and makes me want to look through every local newspaper to see of there was coverage of the trial. This is something that I will for sure do but will probably have to wait for my next trip to France. The newspaper also had articles on abortion and sexual education which they were actually in favor of... that was really interesting. I only looked at the year 1972 and the first 4  months of 1973. 

At the BMD: 

• Found the journal: Choisir. This was a great find because although I had been working through the journal at the BnF at the BMD I can take pictures of it. This is huge news and totally made my day :)

Also learned a new word today: greffer which means to graft which I also had to look up and means to make money by shady or dishonest means. And mec means guy. 


I have not gone through all the courrier in the journal but it will be interesting to see if there is a change in the letters that they print as the years progress. There are women writing to the journal in pretty desperate situations. In the MLAC mail there were still problems after 1975 when abortion was legalized but when a woman was less than 15 weeks into a pregnancy the centers could perform the abortions themselves, however if the pregnancy was more advanced it got m ore complicated. These abortions were and continue to be illegal in France. So, what MLAC did was organize trips to London and Amsterdam where women could have medically practiced late-term abortions. I wonder what Choisir does with letters from women seeking later-term abortions. Do they send them to MLAC? or maybe they have no way of helping them. Choisir was not really set up for that kind of problem but maybe in practice they did participate in organizing trips abroad.