Hang on to the doily

The manifesto appeared in the weekly news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur and carried much more of a risk for Deneuve and the other female signatories, including Simone de Beauvoir, than anything contained in Le Monde last week. Each admitted to having an abortion at the time when it was illegal and they could have been criminally prosecuted. Deneuve, at 28 and at the peak of her career, might have been blacklisted permanently. Instead, doctors signed a declaration in support of the manifesto two years later. In , abortion was decriminalized in France.