Challenging the narrative surrounding reproductive rights

2023: 20/70* //
On the night of 20 January 1964, Annie Ernaux, 23 and a literature student, nearly dies due to her self-administered abortion with a knitting needle. In this text she describes everything that surrounds this experience in detail.

What a powerful and extremely important work: by writing it all down, she rewrites the societal narrative and gives women, whose bodies are a political battleground, a voice. “I believe that every experience, whatever its nature, has the inalienable right to be chronicled. That there is no such thing as a lesser truth. Moreover, if I failed to go through with this undertaking, I would be guilty of silencing the lives of women and condoning a world governed by the patriarchy.” (37)

Ernaux links her traumatic experience with themes of class, taboo and morality. Writers like her embody why literature is valuable and necessary, and I feel extremely privileged that I get to read texts like these.