1000’s protest in opposition to sexual violence in France

1000’s of individuals have taken to the streets throughout France to protest in opposition to sexual violence.

Saturday’s protests come two days earlier than the Worldwide Day for the Elimination of Violence in opposition to Ladies.

Within the capital, Paris, massive crowds of ladies and men marched waving purple banners denouncing gender violence and defending ladies’s reproductive rights.

Protesters expressed concern a couple of doable rollback of girls’s rights in the US when President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White Home in January. Vice President-elect JD Vance mentioned he would love a nationwide abortion ban in a podcast interview in 2022, however has since emphasised that particular person states ought to decide their insurance policies.

French newspaper Le Monde reported that roughly 80,000 protesters took to the streets of Paris and that 400 completely different organizations participated within the demonstrations. He mentioned hundreds of individuals additionally took to the streets in smaller cities throughout the nation, together with 1,500 in Renne, outdoors Lyon in southeastern France.

France enshrined the proper to abortion within the structure in March, a transfer largely seen as a response to the US’ resolution to roll again key reproductive rights protections in 2022, when the Supreme Courtroom struck down decades-old legal guidelines defending the proper to abortion on the nationwide degree. Though abortion has been authorized since 1975 in France, the constitutional change explicitly assured entry to abortion. France was the primary nation on the planet to take action.

Protesters additionally expressed solidarity with Gisele Pelicot, whose ex-husband Dominique Pelicot and 50 different co-defendants are on trial over allegations that males drugged and raped her whereas she was unconscious for a decade. In September, Dominique accepted the fees.

“Sadly, anybody generally is a perpetrator of violence. They are often our brothers. They are often our mother and father. They are often our colleagues. They are often our bosses. I feel that is the large shock for folks,” Maelle Noir, a consultant of the feminist collective Nous Toutes, which interprets as All of Us, advised the Related Press information company throughout the Paris protest.