though it supported the November 25 demonstration.
CADAC has also won support and continuing participa. tion from a number of unions (particularly outside the main expensive pills are not reimEE duction of a legal requirement for parity in parliament. While this is not supported by most feminists, it has provoked a much needed debate on women's absence from this arena.
Following the success of the November 25 demonstration, CADAC and other organisations plan a national conference on women's rights around International Women's Day 1997.
Women in France are not ready to accept limiting their rights and have shown that even in these "post-feminist" days it is still possible to mobilise. A lesson to be learnt. for Jodley Green ACROSS THE world women are denied the right to control their fertility. They risk their lives, their health and their freedom to have illegal abortions.
Reasons for wanting an abortion vary, but they are all equally determined not to have a child against their will.
Twenty-one year old Suntali Rai spent two years imprisoned in Nepal for having an illegal abortion after being raped. "I was three months pregnant and went to the sudeni (midwite), who gave me some herbs and told me to put a sharpened stick in my vagina. I bled and bled. I thought I would die"
Her story is common in Nepal. where women who have had abortions can be charged with murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
In the fifties Mexico was the destination of many US women-most famously Marilyn Monroe-seeking illegal abortions Mexican abortion laws vary from state to state, with women usually having to prove that they have been raped or that the pregnancy is a risk to life. Abortions done for other reasons incur risk of arrest and harassment by the police One woman explains, "l became pregnant despite using a contraceptive device. I have tow sons and could not afford to feed another child... We were taken by bus to where 'the deed' would be done...On our way home, a blue car without number plates suddenly stopped our vehicle and armed police boarded the bus.
"The journey continued, during