Women's reappropriation of their bodies, in both their sexual and maternal aspects, is at the heart of the feminist movement. In 2024, this struggle is still relevant, particularly as the inclusion in the French constitution of the freedom to get an abortion has been the subject of a bitter parliamentary battle for 18 months; while alongside that, President Emmanuel Macron has called – much to the chagrin of feminist activists – for a "demographic rearmament" of the country.

Have women finally reclaimed the bodies they were dispossessed of by the mechanisms of patriarchal domination?

Camille Froidevaux-Metterie is a philosopher, specializing in feminist thought. She is notably the author of the essays Un corps à Soi ("A Body of Your Own," Seuil, 2021) and Un si Gros Ventre. Expériences Vécues du Corps Enceinte ("Such a Big Belly: Experiences of the Pregnant Body," Stock, 2023). She explains how these two current events illustrate the close link that persists between control of the maternal womb and the sexist logic of objectifying women's bodies.

It's because women have been defined solely in terms of their bodies, in both their sexual and maternal functions, that they have been relegated to the domestic sphere and regarded as inferior beings, from ancient times right up to the present day. The female body is therefore at the heart of feminism; it is the ultimate site of male domination. Simone de Beauvoir's Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex), published in 1949, vividly demonstrates this. But it wasn't until the 1970s that this became an objective: The aim was to liberate women from an existence seen as "destiny."

The struggle for reproductive rights was the tool of this liberation, but it was waged in the name of two antagonistic conceptions of motherhood. For materialist (Marxist-inspired) feminists, women are a resource owned in common by society and by each man in particular. This radical critique of heterosexuality as an institution leads to the proposal of political lesbianism by which women escape patriarchal power relations.

Differentialist feminists, on the other hand, defend the cause of women, valuing childbirth as a specific female production and asserting the "power" of women's procreative capacity. But beyond these different approaches, the fact remains that the conquest of contraception and abortion rights marks an anthropological turning point: By taking control of their procreative "nature," women can finally become a part of the social world and become individuals with rights in their own right.

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