Marie-Louise Giraud

Marie-Louise Giraud (November 17, 1903 - July 30, 1943) was a housewife and mother who became one of the last women to be guillotined in France. Giraud was a convicted abortionist in 1940s Nazi occupied France. She was executed on July 30, 1943 for having performed 27 abortions in the Cherbourg area. Her story was dramatized in the 1988 film Story of Women directed by Claude Chabrol.

Marie-Louise Giraud, at the age of 39, was guillotined on the morning of July 30, 1943, in the courtyard of the prison de la Roquette in Paris by executioner Jules-Henri Desfourneaux for having performed 27 abortions in the region of Cherbourg. She was the only faiseuse d'anges (French slang: literally "maker of angels") to be executed for this reason. A man was also beheaded the same year for three abortions.

Coming from a poor family, Giraud was married to a sailor, with whom she had two children. She worked as a domestic housekeeper and laundress. From the beginning of World War II, she also rented rooms to prostitutes. She began to perform abortions, initially on a voluntary basis and without compensation.

The law of 1920, which criminalized abortion, had the following aims:

The law of March 27, 1923, stated that whoever caused the miscarriage of a woman shall be punished by one to five years imprisonment and a fine of 500 to 10,000 FF. Also, the woman who had aborted risked six months to two years in prison, but as an offense, not a crime. A person charged with abortion was judged not by a jury but by a panel of judges, as juries were believed to be swayed too easily by emotion.

In 1935, paralleling a similar movement in the United States, Dr. Jean Dalsace opened Suresnes (Hauts-de-Seine), the first birth control clinic.

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