Transnational Influence and Comparing Manifestoes

The Manifesto of the 343 inspired similar declarations in both the United States and Germany in the year following its publication. These public confessions to having had abortions when the practice was illegal were more than an act of dissent. Organized public events like these served to “‘remove the feelings of shame, humiliation, and illegitimacy associated with abortion’ and thus make abortion ‘a legitimate political issue for the public to debate and to resolve through the political process’”.(1) For this reason, these public displays of open subversion of the laws were effective in exposing the archaic nature of the laws as well as normalizing abortion in the eyes of the public.
When looking at the text of the three manifestoes, all three of the appeals focus on a woman’s right to control their own bodies and the repeal of laws criminalizing abortion. The Manifesto of the 343 stands out compared to its American and German counterparts in a couple of ways. First, the Manifesto of the 343 is significantly longer than the German or American features, clocking in at 1,358 words compared to 169 and 434 words from German and American publications, respectively. Secondly, compared to Le Nouvel Observateur, Stern and Ms. magazines appeal to the issue of abortion as a matter of protecting women. While all three of these declarations address the unnecessary danger of clandestine procedures, the Manifesto of the 343 focuses on abortion as an extension of their rights as citizens. They argue “free abortion on demand is not the ultimate goal of women’s plight. On the contrary, it is but the most basic necessity, without which the political fight cannot even begin.”(2) I will discuss the concept of autonomy in the French context in further detail here.
In the United States, for example, the right to an abortion has been understood as “a constitutional right of privacy under the Ninth and 14th Amendments to determine for herself whether to bear a child.” (3) This idea has been upheld by the Supreme Court in the landmark case Roe v. Wade. Unlike in the context of the United States, where abortion rights are seen as a matter of privacy, the MLF instead chose to push the subject of abortion into the national conversation by arguing the right to abortion as a matter of citizenship. This right to personal autonomy is not apparent compared to the American context and is particularly unique in the French context.

While researching this topic, I used a text analysis program to create a word cloud to help identify major themes and figure out the direction of my analysis. While working with the translated materials, I began to consider the impact of the translation on the meaning of the text. Placing the transcripts of English and French versions of the manifesto into word clouds, there are some differences that merit further investigation. The two most used words in both versions are “women” (“femmes”) and “abortion” (“l’avortement), but their position changes depending on the translation. In the original French, “women” is the most used word and “abortion” is the second most used, vice versa for its English counterpart. Looking at the five most frequently used terms, number four and five are the same in both versions, “free” (“libre”) and “movement” (“mouvement”) respectively. The third most frequent terms in the English and French translations are quite different. The third most used word in the English version is “want” and in the original French, it is “corps”, which translates to “body” in English. This difference has the ability to change the impact of the text. Within the French context, the issue of body politics has “historically… been associated with the male body.”(4) For French women and feminist activists, the fact that they did not have complete control over their bodies displayed their status as second class citizens.(5) The frequent usage of “body” exposes an important theme that may not be fully addressed or considered when only looking at the English translation of the text.

1. Sandra Reineke, “Border Crossings: Simone de Beauvoir, Feminist Intellectual Exchanges, and the Organization of Women’s Studies Programs in France, Germany, and the United States”, Simone De Beauvoir Studies 25 (2008): 63-80. Accessed December 8, 2020. doi:10.2307/45170666.

2. “The Manifesto of the 343”, Le Nouvel Observateur, no. 334, April 1971, 6.

3. “Abortion and Privacy,” Time Magazine, Vol. 99 Issue 11, March 13, 1972, 58

4. Reineke, Beauvoir and Her Sisters, 57

5. Reineke, Beauvoir and Her Sisters, 62