The Event (2.5)

Annie Ernaux

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With such a story, it is time that I start and reluctantly prepare myself. Now I know that I have decided to go all the way, to what it comes to, in the same way which I had, at the age of 23, when I tore the certification of my pregnancy.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     I want to immerse myself again in this period of my life, knowing what has been caught here. Such exploration will be part of the framework of a story, and will only be able to rend an event which has been from the time inside and outside of myself. An intimate agenda and a dairy kept during these months will bring me reference points and necessary proofs for establishing the facts. I will try hard to come down in each image, until I have the physical sensation of “join”, and some words come into sight, of which I could to say, “that is right”. To hear each of these phrases again, indelible on me, the sense becomes then so unbearable or conversely so comforting, that thinking them today submerges me from disgust or from sweetness.

The form under which I have lived through such experience of abortion – the clandestine nature – coming within one past story seems to me not a valid ground for leaving it buried – even if the paradox from one fair law is almost always written by forcing the former victims silenced, in the name of “that’s the end of it”, so the same silence as before covers what happened. It is precise because no more banning hangs over abortion that I can, setting aside the collective means and the necessary methods, which have been simplified and imposed by the fight of the 1970s  – “violence against women” etc. –, confront, in its reality, such unforgettable event.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Doctors are sentenced to be in prison and be fined 1) the author who maneuvers abortion on someone; 2) the doctors, midwives, pharmacists, and culprits, who have indicated or favored these maneuvers; 3) the woman who does her own abortion or who grants abortion; 4) the provocation into abortion and the propaganda for contraception. A ban on the profession is being abled in addition to pronounce guilty, for those culprits in the second category, the permanent or temporary deprivation of exercise for their profession.

New Universal Larrouse, edition of 1948.