Image – Shutterstock: Piotr Swat
The official Nobel Prize website has published an article praising Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux in which the author calls for a monument to women who died after illegal abortions, prompting criticism over what some see as the platform’s endorsement of law-breaking that resulted in the deaths of unborn children.
The article, published this month as a co-production between Nobel Prize Outreach and the BBC World Service, recounts Ernaux’s experience of undergoing an illegal abortion in France in 1963 when she was a 23-year-old student.
Abortion was illegal in France at the time and those involved, including the pregnant woman, could face prison sentences. Ernaux describes attempting to induce the abortion herself before eventually miscarrying and being rushed to hospital after haemorrhaging.
Reflecting on that period, Ernaux said women who died after illegal abortions should be commemorated with a monument similar to France’s memorial to the Unknown Soldier.
“I think they deserve to have a monument, like there is to the unknown soldier in France,” she said.
The article also highlights Ernaux’s belief that abortion is a “fundamental freedom” and praises her decision to write about the experience in her book Happening, which has since been adapted into an award-winning film and included on school reading lists in France.
However, critics say the Nobel Prize website should be careful not to appear to celebrate the deliberate ending of unborn human life, particularly when the procedures being discussed were illegal at the time they were carried out.
Questions have also been raised about whether it is appropriate for the website of one of the world’s most prestigious academic institutions to present material that appears to romanticise the breaking of laws designed to protect vulnerable human life.
France legalised abortion in 1975 and earlier this year became the first country to explicitly enshrine a right to abortion in its constitution.
Speaking on the matter, SPUC’S Communications Manager, Peter Kearney, said, “Portraying illegal abortions primarily as acts of courage or liberation risks overlooking the central reality that such procedures intentionally ended the lives of unborn children. An organisation with the scientific and cultural prestige of the Nobel Prize should know the reality of human life’s beginnings from conception and should not ever endorse the destruction of it. No organisation known for rewarding peacemakers should ever laud those who are ignorant towards the inherent dignity of the human being.”
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