4 singular novels on the question of abortion

Stories to understand what it meant to have an abortion when it was inconceivable to say the word aloudstories to understand it abortion still remains a fragile right todaydystopias not so far away that they shed light on our news …

Here is a selection of novels that in many ways come close to abortion, to be devoured urgently.

The red hours by Leni Zumas

“A month earlier, the abortion ban had gone into effect at the federal level. [aux USA].

Mattie told herself: We have to take you to Canada. They had not yet closed the border to abortion candidates. The ‘Rose Wall’ was just an idea.

A year and a half later, the Canadian border patrol arrested American women wishing to have an abortion and sent them back to the United States for trial. “

Given the context in the United States, The red hours inevitably it seems to be terribly close to us.

The novel by Leni Zumas, which we have already told you about in a selection of feminist dystopias, follows four women including Mattie, a pregnant teenager determined to become a scientist, who must take the risk of crossing the border to have an abortion. A healthy echo a The Scarlet Maid by Margaret Atwood.

Annie Ernaux’s event

“And, as usual, it was impossible to determine whether abortion was forbidden because it was wrong, or whether it was wrong because it was forbidden. We have judged in relation to the law, we have not judged the law. “

Recently adapted by Audrey Diwan, this important novel by Annie Ernaux has lost none of its strength. She transmits all her determination to us and takes us with her memories of this crucial moment in her life.

In front of her boyfriend, in front of her parents, in front of the doctor, in front of the woman who was then called the “creator of angels”, Annie Ernaux describes with finesse and precision the obstacles of the time, when the right to abortion was not yet voted in France.

A Book of the American Martyrs by Joyce Carol Oates

“When I asked Darren if Dad had killed the kids, he grimaced and said haughtily that that wasn’t what they called them. I have not understood. Who were they? Who were they?

Darren is bullshit. They call them fa-tusses, fools. ”

In 1999, Luther Dunphy, a fervent believer who believed himself to be an envoy from God, went to an abortion center to kill an abortion doctor, Augustus Voorhees. Both believe they hold the truth, both will know death for defending their ideals. Joyce Carol Oates is interested in these two men, but even more than her in her respective daughters, despite themselves being dragged into tragedy, forced to assume the terrible inheritance of her father.

Far from any Manichaeism, even if the author Joyce Carol Oates is a democratic and fierce defender of the right to abortion, she explores the complexity of the journeys of these two young women in all their nuances and manages to draw the portrait of an America more divided than ever.

Your Suzanne Duval Pregnancy

“Fortunately I have a choice. Thanks, my choice. But at the same time you think to yourself that an emergency situation would undoubtedly have facilitated the decision, for example, to hit the wall. Because bumping into the wall was always an option.

For you who have never liked to slow down, having the choice is terrifying. And the vision of choice comes and goes in your head, liberating and terrifying. ”

Despite the almost misleading title, Suzanne Duval copes well with abortion in this novel.

An intimate story in the second person, which years later Annie Ernaux shows other facets of the use of abortion: if today, fortunately, women no longer have to risk their lives when they choose to have an abortion, they are still traversed by a myriad of emotions , complex, sometimes contradictory questions and problems.

And she ? What is the novel about abortion that has marked you?