The Neuwirth Law is a French
law
Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...
which lifted the ban on
birth control methods on December 28, 1967, including oral contraception. It was passed by the
National Assembly
In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the rep ...
on December 19, 1967. The law is named after
Lucien Neuwirth, the
Gaullist
Gaullism (french: link=no, Gaullisme) is a French political stance based on the thought and action of World War II French Resistance leader Charles de Gaulle, who would become the founding President of the Fifth French Republic. De Gaulle with ...
politician who proposed it. It replaced a law from 1920 that not only forbade all forms of contraception, but also information about contraception. The law was not fully implemented until 1972 due to administrative delays.
Background
Following the great losses of the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, all birth control means and their promotion had been banned in 1920 to ensure population growth. However, some French people could still get information and products from abroad.
[ Several proposals had been made to unban birth control before 1966.][ In 1965, legalization of oral contraception was discussed by François Mitterrand during that year's presidential election, which shocked General Charles de Gaulle. Eleven bills were proposed between 1958 and 1967 and none of them made it onto the agenda.
]
History
Lucien Neuwirth was a long-time opponent to the 1920 law, and faced opposition from the right to repeal it. He met with de Gaulle to provide reasoning for a new bill, and de Gaulle relented in letting one be drafted and considered.[ With some help from the French birth control movement (''Mouvement français du planning familial''), Neuwirth wrote a law draft to legalize birth control in May 1966.]
Neuwirth created a special commission with other members Mitterrand and Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier. This commission brought in various institutions, associations, and scientists including Jacques Monod
Jacques Lucien Monod (February 9, 1910 – May 31, 1976) was a French biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965, sharing it with François Jacob and André Lwoff "for their discoveries concerning genetic control of e ...
, François Jacob
François Jacob (17 June 1920 – 19 April 2013) was a French biologist who, together with Jacques Monod, originated the idea that control of enzyme levels in all cells occurs through regulation of transcription. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize ...
, Alfred Sauvy and Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu (; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influence ...
. Neuwirth wrote a second bill representing the work of the commission and presented it to the new assembly on April 12, 1967. The assembly debates were sharp, but disciplined. The critics were mainly the conservatives who relayed the positions of Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
organizations and the national doctor organization (''l'Ordre des médecins''). Debate concentrated around limits and freedom of prescriptions. Proponents for creating limits for contraceptive prescriptions noted the existing requirement on the practice of therapeutic abortion, where the opinion of three doctors was necessary.
Formally proposed during the spring of 1967,[ the Neuwirth Law, or the ''loi relative à la régulation des naissances et abrogeant les articles L. 648 et L. 649 du code de la santé publique'', as approved by the joint committee, was passed with ]left-wing
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...
support on 19 December 1967. The law received support from all of the opposition party and part of the majority party. It was promulgated on 28 December under the name ′law relative to birth regulation′.[ Contraception and the contraceptive pill were authorized by the law but were not reimbursable by ]Social security
Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifical ...
.
Afterwards
The relative executive decrees were blocked by the conservative government, notably Jean Foyer, then minister for Health, some as late as 1974.[ In the intervening years, oral contraceptives were on the market, but were routinely being prescribed for other purposes. In 1974, contraceptives became reimbursable under Social security.
Today in France, contraception is regulated in articles L5134, R5134 and R2311-13 of the public health code. Abortion was not affected by the Neuwirth Law, and was prohibited until the Veil Law of January 17, 1975, which provided for the decriminalization of conditional abortion.
Jointly with the Veil Law of 1974 which unbanned ]abortion
Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion"; these occur in approximately 30% to 40% of pre ...
, the Neuwirth law allowed couples to reduce the number of both wanted and unwanted births, leading to a decrease of the fertility from 2.5 to 1.81 children by woman in 1985.
References
{{reflist
Greenwald, Lisa. ''Daughters of 1968: Redefining Feminism and the Women's Liberation Movement''. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2018.
Health law in France
Birth control in France