Birth Control France

Society for French Historical Studies
Regulating Abortion and Birth Control: Gender, Medicine, and Republican Politics in France,
1870-1920
Author(s): Jean Elisabeth Pedersen
Source: French Historical Studies, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Spring, 1996), pp. 673-698
Published by: Duke University Press
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Regulating Abortion and Birth Control:
Gender, Medicine,
and Republican Politics
in
France,
1870-1920
Jean Elisabeth Pedersen
From 1873-75, the members of the Societe d'anthropologie de Paris
participated in the first of many anxious discussions of the declining
French birthrate. Following a call to action by Louis-Adolphe Bertillon,
statistician for the city of Paris, a major presentation by Dr. Gustave
Lagneau, and lengthy debate, the members agreed that the problem
was the result of "the very natural preoccupation of a father to assure
the future of his children." ' When one listener, the economist Sanson,
argued that the topic was more appropriate for economists than for
anthropologists, Lagneau responded that discussing depopulation was
"perfectly within the jurisdiction of the Societe d'anthropologie [and
belonged] to our society more than any other." 2
Jean Elisabeth Pedersen is assistant professor of history in the Humanities Department
of the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. She is currently writing a book
on gender in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century republican political culture which ex-
amines the debates among feminists, doctors, social scientists, and politicians in case studies on
divorce and paternity suits as well as abortion and birth control. She is also writing a series of
essays on gender, politics, and canon formation in the French social sciences.
Previous versions of this essay were presented in 1990 at the University of Chicago's Work-
shop in the History of the Human Sciences and in 1991 at the Society for French Historical
Studies, the Social Science History Association, and the Research Seminar of the University of
Rochester's Susan B. Anthony Center for Women's Studies. In addition to thanking those audi-
ences, the author would like to give particular thanks to the following attentive listeners and
insightful readers: Jan Goldstein, Carol Anderson, Dolores Peters, Nayan Shah, Leslie Schuster,
Rachel Fuchs, and the two anonymous readers from French Historical Studies. Finally, the author
would like to acknowledge the grants which enabled this research: a Bourse Chateaubriand from
the French government, a Humanities Research Fellowship from the University of Chicago, and
a Faculty Research Grant from the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women's Studies at the Univer-
sity of Rochester.
1
Pellarin in "Suite de la discussion sur la natalit6 dans les differentes classes de la societ6,"
Bulletin de la SociNte d'anthropologie de Paris, 2d ser., 9 (16 July 1874): 598.
2
Gustave Lagneau in "Discussion sur la fecondit6 des differentes classes de la societ6,"
Bulletin de la SociNte d'anthropologie de Paris, 2d ser., 9 (2July 1874): 583-84.
French Historical Studies, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Spring 1996)
Copyright ? 1996 by the Society for French Historical Studies
674 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES
Lagneau's confident statement received immediate contradiction
from the one female member of the Societe d'anthropologie, the
feminist social scientist Clemence Royer, who stated her belief that
"although this subject is in the domain of anthropology, anthropology
alone will not be able to resolve it."
3
In the next meeting she completely
rejected her male colleagues' idea that men were the only people in-
volved in family decision making. "Until now," she argued, "science,
like law, made exclusively by men, has too much considered the woman
as an absolutely passive being, without instincts, without passions, with-
out her own interests.... Being always at least one half [of those]
involved in the reproduction of the species, she must play a role, and
a dominant role, in its more or less rapid multiplication."4
Royer's proposed solutions differed from those of her male col-
leagues in two ways. First, she wanted support to be aimed at mothers
instead of fathers. Second, denying the primacy of the male-dominated
family outlined in the Civil Code, she wanted to support both married
and single mothers. Instead of socioeconomic incentives for fathers,
she advocated eugenic abortions, legal equality for legitimate and ille-
gitimate children, a married woman's right to work without her hus-
band's consent, legal divorce, and a social system in which new mothers
lived with their parents instead of their husbands to receive help with
child rearing.5
Royer's comments were so upsetting to the Societe that they re-
fused to print them in their Bulletin. They remained unread in galley
proofs for over a century. Historian Joy Harvey has explained that
the Societe suppressed Royer's comments out of fear that they might
jeopardize negotiations with the Paris Faculty of Medicine, the Paris
Municipal Council, and various individual subscribers who wanted to
create a school of anthropology. When Paul Broca, the founder of
the Societe, asked Royer to modify her attacks on the Civil Code be-
fore publication, she refused, arguing that the birthrate should be
discussed "at least once by a woman who believes herself as capable
as any man to pretend to the title philosopher.... Just because she
is a woman, she is free from certain prejudices characteristic of men
on these delicate questions."6 The publication committee, headed by
Louis-Adolphe Bertillon, sent the issue to press without her pages.
3 C16mence Royer in Lagneau, "Discussion sur la fftondit6," 585.
4 C16mence Royer, "Sur la natalit6" quoted in SaraJoan Miles, "Evolution and Natural Law
in the Synthetic Science of Clemence Royer" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1988), 312.
5 Royer, "Sur la natalit6," in Miles, "Clemence Royer," 313.
6
Clemence Royer
to Paul Broca, 15
May 1875; quoted
in
Joy Harvey, "Strangers
to Each
Other: Male and Female Relationships in the Life and Work of Clemence Royer," in Uneasy Careers
REGULATING ABORTION AND BIRTH CONTROL 675
This incident provides an early example of the conflicts among
republican politicians, professionals, and feminists confronting the de-
population crisis, the fear that France was in danger of losing author-
ity both at home and abroad as the result of a declining population.
Their debates over depopulation, in turn, provide a particularly good
example of the relationships among social constructions of gender,
the consolidation of disciplines, and republican politics. By the fin de
siecle, anxiety over depopulation had become what one historian has
called a "master pathology," and in 1920, shortly after World War I,
the Assemblee nationale passed what another historian has called "the
most oppressive laws in Europe against contraception and abortion." 7
Despite the confident assertions of the anthropologists, the disci-
pline which actually achieved the greatest cultural authority in the
debate over depopulation in general and the debate over the law of
1920 in particular was that of medicine. A number of historians have
discussed the ways in which medicine gained power and prestige in
France at the end of the nineteenth century.8 These accounts stress
not only the intellectual continuities between positivist medicine and
republican anticlericalism but also the social and political networks
which resulted in record numbers of left-leaning doctors in the senate
and chamber of deputies. However, looking more closely at the debates
over depopulation inside and outside the Assemblee nationale shows a
more complicated picture. Within the broad medical consensus there
were times when doctors disagreed, and within the broad political con-
sensus there were times when republicans disagreed. I argue that these
political disagreements turned around conflicts over how the govern-
ment should relate to men and women inside and outside their families.
The debates leading up to the 1920 decision to address depopulation
and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1789-1979, ed. Pnina G. Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram (New
Brunswick, NJ., 1987), 163. For a fuller biography of Clemence Royer see Genevieve Fraisse, Cm-
mence
Royer:
Philosophe etfemme des sciences (Paris, 1985).
7 See Robert Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics in Modern France: The Medical Concept of National
Decline (Princeton, N.J., 1984), 139-40; and Angus McLaren, Sexuality and Social Order: The Debate
over the Fertility of Women and Workers in France, 1770-1920 (London, 1983), 1. For the text of the
law see Susan Groag Bell and Karen M. Offen, eds., Women, the Family, and Freedom: The Debate in
Documents (Stanford, Calif., 1983), 2:309-10; and Francis Ronsin, La Grave des ventres: Propagande
ngo-malthusienne et baisse de la natalitgfran~aise, 19e-20e sieces (Paris, 1980), 146-47. For an account
of the law which also stresses its oppressive aspects but focuses on developments after its pas-
sage rather than before, see Janine Mossuz-Levau, Les Lois de l'amour: Les Politiques de la sexuality
en France, 1950-1990 (Paris, 1991).
8
See, for example, Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics; Jack D. Ellis, The Physician Legislators
of France: Medicine and Politics in the Early Third Republic, 1870-1914 (Cambridge, 1990); Rachel G.
Fuchs, Poor and Pregnant in Paris: Strategies for Survival in the Nineteenth Century (New Bruns-
wick, N.J., 1992); Ruth Harris, Murder and Madness: Medicine, Law, and Society in the Fin-de-Siecle
(Oxford, 1989).
by restricting abortion and contraceptive information demonstrate not
only the triumph of medical solutions to social problems but also the
way in which solidarist doctors and politicians legislated a particular
vision of how women and men should relate to each other, their fami-
lies, and the state.
Republican feminists argued that a political focus on mother-
hood could produce important gains for women in recognition of their
social significance.9 For them, motherhood was a social function which
deserved recognition with rights as well as responsibilities. However,
historians of French social welfare programs have documented how
solidarist initiatives simultaneously recognized and regulated women.10
Although most republican feminists either supported the law of 1920
or remained silent, the law of 1920 provides a vivid example of what
I call the dark side of republican motherhood, the way in which, in
moments of crisis, women could become irrelevant, even to the most
sympathetic solidarist republican legislators, except in their capacity
as mandatory mothers.
Royer and her colleagues had argued over whether to extend as-
sistance to fathers or to mothers, but the law of 1920 focused not on
providing social assistance to those who were choosing large families
but on extending the regulation of those who were choosing small
families. Giving or getting an abortion had been illegal in France since
1810; the law of 1920 continued the practice of seeing private decisions
about family size as matters of public policy by instituting penalties for
anyone who recommended abortion, sold instruments which could in-
duce abortion, sold or distributed contraceptives, or discussed birth
control. The new regulation of birth control represented a dramatic ex-
tension in the legal control of reproduction, which had earlier concen-
trated on abortion alone. This prohibition on the sale and discussion
of contraceptives, while ostensibly universal, was actually gendered: it
affected men and women in different ways. The exhaustive list of pro-
hibited substances included all female methods of contraception but
9 See Karen M. Offen, "Depopulation, Nationalism, and Feminism in Fin-de-Siecle France,"
American Historical Review 89 (1984): 648-76; and Claire Goldberg Moses, French Feminism in the
Nineteenth Century (Albany, N.Y., 1984). For a recent analysis of the different ways feminists used
the concept of motherhood see Anne Cova, "French Feminism and Maternity: Theories and
Policies, 1890-1918," in Maternity and Gender Policies: Women and the Rise of European Welfare States,
1880s-1950s, ed. Gisela Bock and Pat Thane (London, 1991).
10
See, for example, Mary Lynn Stewart, Women, Work, and the French State (Kingston, Ont.,
1989); Sonya Michel and Seth Koven, "Womanly Duties: Maternalist Policies and the Origins of
Welfare States in France, Germany, Britain, and the United States, 1880-1920," American Historical
Review, 95 (1990): 1076-1108; Rachel G. Fuchs, "France in a Comparative Perspective," in Gender
and the Politics of Social Reform in France, 1870-1914, ed. Elinor Accampo, Rachel Fuchs, and Mary
Lynn Stewart (Baltimore, Md., 1995), 157-83.
did not include condoms. This indicates that the French legislators'
expanded political and medical authority to intervene into family life
was extended through the bodies of women.
It would be difficult to talk about the history of disciplines and
the regulation of sexuality without talking about Foucault. Foucaldian
analysis enables us to see the overwhelming French concern about de-
population as an example of modern state formation around the regu-
lation of what Foucault called "biopower," highlighting the compli-
cated relationship between disciplinary knowledge and political power
in the French Third Republic." In the debate at the Societe d'anthro-
pologie and in subsequent debates at other professional societies,
speakers tried to convince the French government that their disci-
plines had special insight into depopulation. In exchange, they hoped
to receive government recognition, funding, and prestige. They also
participated in the elaboration and regulation of sexual beliefs and
sexual behaviors.
However, though valuable, Foucaldian analysis alone is not enough
to understand either Royer's censorship or the law of 1920 because of
the ways in which Foucault failed to take gender into account in his
own work. Foucault's work has been cited by a wide range of schol-
ars interested in women's relationship to power.'2 However, unlike the
feminist historians of sexuality who came before and after him, Fou-
cault often discussed gender and power without taking women into ac-
count.'3 For example, Discipline and Punish concentrated on how male
doctors and criminologists supervised and created knowledge out of
the bodies of male criminals and the insane.'4 In The History of Sexuality,
Foucault briefly considered the role of gender and the importance of
11 See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley (New York, 1980).
For a selection of French historians who have developed Foucaldian histories of disciplines see
Gerald Geison, ed., Professions
and the French State, 1 700-1900
(Philadelphia, Pa., 1984);Jan
Gold-
stein, "Foucault among the Sociologists: The 'Disciplines' and the History of the Professions,"
History and Theory 23 (1984): 170-92; and idem, Console and Classify: The French Psychiatric Profes-
sion in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1987); and Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics.
12 See, for example, Judith R. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and
the State (New York, 1980); Jill Harsin, Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Princeton,
NJ., 1985); and Rachel Ginnis Fuchs, Abandoned Children:Foundlings and Child Welfare in Nineteenth-
Century France (Albany, N.Y., 1984). For an overview of the issues involved in combining feminist
and Foucaldian analysis see Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby, introduction to Feminism and Fou-
cault: Reflections on Resistance, ed. Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby (Boston, 1988).
13 For expanded discussions of this point see Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight:
Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago, 1992), 8-9; Biddy Martin, "Femi-
nism, Criticism, and Foucault," in Diamond and Quinby, Feminism and Foucault, esp. 7; and Nancy
Hartsock, "Foucault on Power: A Theory for Women?" in Feminism/Postmodernism, ed. Linda J.
Nicholson (New York, 1990).
14
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New
York, 1979).
women when he argued that one of the first important figures in the
modern production of sexual knowledge was "the hysterical woman."
However, recognition of the centrality of gender distinctions faded
away in his neutral descriptions of the other three figures, "the mas-
turbating child, the Malthusian couple, and the perverse adult." 15
Foucault's "Malthusian couple" was the subject of most debates
over depopulation, but, in fact, the male and female halves of this para-
digmatic contracepting couple were discussed separately and treated
differently. More recent feminist histories of the relationship between
gender and power have stressed the need to combine Foucault's sense
of how power relationships pervade people's lives with a focus on how
these relationships have worked differently for women and men.'6 To
understand how the French state and French disciplines regulated the
population, we need to see the ways in which this regulation often
came over and through the bodies of women.
Anxiety over depopulation intensified in France at the turn of the
century. However, there was no greater consensus over how to address
the issue after 1890 than there had been in 1873. The next section of
this essay shows how republican feminists tried to use the anxiety over
depopulation to demand rights for women and looks at how these de-
mands compared with the arguments among republican medical men
which later had the most influence on republican politicians. Republi-
can doctors and their allies argued over whether to increase births or
diminish deaths, whether to help fathers or mothers, and whether to
focus on legitimate families or help illegitimate children as well. Under-
standing their debates outside the Assemblee nationale will help us to
see the significance of what the law of 1920 did and did not do.
Republican feminists used the depopulation crisis to demonstrate
the social importance of motherhood and to demand expanded oppor-
tunities for women. Although they focused their attention on women
as mothers, they always coupled their demands for the social support of
mothers with demands for professional, civil, and political equality for
all French women. For example, Clemence Royer continued to argue
with the Societe d'anthropologie over its patriarchal approach to the
depopulation question long after the suppression of her suggestions
in 1873. In 1895 she wrote in to express her new belief that nothing
less than the restoration of a matriarchal society could solve the prob-
lem. "Since men have increasingly avoided the charges of the family,"
15 Foucault, History of Sexuality, 1:105.
16
See Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight, 9; and Mary Poovey, Uneven Developments: The Ideo-
logical Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England (Chicago, 1988), 23.
she explained, "inheritance should descend in the feminine line ex-
clusively." In her new system, families would take the mother's name,
younger children would be supervised by the oldest daughter, and
mother and daughters would share housekeeping. The result, Royer
explained, would be a society in which women were "free to take up
remunerative professions and children would be protected more effec-
tively than [they would be] by their fathers."'17 This vision promised
both healthier children for the French state and increased professional
opportunities for French women.
Most republican feminists were less sweeping in their suggestions
than Royer. However, they all agreed that women's place in the family
and society had to be improved before they would bear more children.
In 1893 republican Maria Deraismes, the founder of the Association
pour le droit des femmes, made depopulation a feminist issue in a
speech to the Societe d'allaitement maternel et des refuges-ouvroirs
pour les femmes enceintes. Here she argued that as long as women did
not have equal rights, they had no incentive to bear children whom
they could not support. Blaming depopulation on the "masculine privi-
lege" which continued to exist in her supposedly "democratic society,"
she called for comprehensive modifications to the Civil Code. "It is
well understood," she concluded, "that procreation cannot be made
obligatory. The indicated solution is the reform of certain articles of
the Code: paternity suits, the reduction of paternal authority, and the
equality of the two sexes before the law."' 8 Here again, a call to help
underprivileged children became a demand for women's equal rights.
In 1900 Blanche Edwards-Pilliet, one of the first female doctors
in France, presented a third republican feminist position on the im-
portance of motherhood at the Congres international de la condition
et des droits de la femme. Speaking to an international audience of
women, reporters, and politicians, she proclaimed,
the time will come when woman will be considered a veritable social
functionary during her gestation and nursing period. At this time,
she is in the debt of society, which in exchange for the enormous
effort of maternity, owes her nourishment, lodging, and rest.19
When Edwards-Pilliet spoke at feminist conferences,
she tended to
focus on state support for motherhood without talking about equal
17 Clemence Royer, "Diminution de la population de la France," Bulletin de la Socigte
d'anthropologie de Paris, 4th ser., 6 (7 Nov. 1895): 655.
18
Maria Deraismes, "De la depopulation," Bulletin de la Socigtg de lallaitement maternel et des
refuges-ouvroirs pour lesfemmes enceintes, no. 8 (1893): 2-4.
19
Blanche Edwards-Pilliet, "Rapport . . . au Congres international de la condition et des
droits des femmes"; quoted
in Bell and Offen, Women, the
Family,
and Freedom, 2:145.
rights. However, in other arenas she also stressed the need for such
rights. For example, she advocated equal educational opportunities
up to the highest university levels, and she held suffrage meetings at
her house.20
Republican feminists encountered a mixed response from the
republican men on whose political power they depended for legal
change. Historian Karen Offen has labeled the two primary responses
as patriarchal patriotism and solidarism.2' Patriarchal patriots, such as
Jacques Bertillon, stressed the importance of raising the French birth-
rate through incentive programs for fathers. Solidarist republicans,
such as Paul Strauss, supported bourgeois republican feminists' em-
phasis on taking maternity into account. I will argue that this division
over how republican men responded to feminism is also a useful way of
characterizing doctors' disagreements over how to respond to depopu-
lation. However, I also argue that there were important continuities
between patriarchal patriotism and solidarism, continuities which help
explain why even solidarists did not always make the perfect political
allies that republican feminists sought.
Offen has defined the distinction between the two groups pri-
marily in terms of gender, contrasting men who wanted to help other
men with men who wanted to help women. However, the distinction be-
tween patriarchal patriots and solidarists actually represented not only
a conflict over whether men or women deserved help, but also a con-
flict over how the state should relate to the family and a conflict over
how doctors should relate to society. Patriarchal patriots insisted that
only autonomous, male-dominated families could create what Jules
Simon called "the population which is healthy in mind and body: the
one which works, the one which fights."22 They stressed the need to
increase the birthrate with
legitimate
children, not what
Jacques
Ber-
tillon characterized as the "syphilitic, scrofulous, tubercular children"
of illegitimate unions.23
Bertillon and his supporters further insisted that a traditional
medical focus on fighting death and disease could never be enough
to stop depopulation unless the government also took measures to in-
crease the birthrate. Bertillon himself had been trained as a doctor, but
he worked as a demographer, acting as statistician for the city of Paris.
20
See Claude Barbizet and Francoise Leguay, BlancheEdwards-Pilliet: Femme et m&decin, 1858-
1941 (Le Mans, 1988), 120-23.
21 Offen, "Depopulation, Nationalism, and Feminism," 668-71.
22Jules Simon, "La Natalit6 en France," Seances et travaux de lAcadgmie des sciences morales et
politiques 34 (1890): 499.
23Jacques Bertillon, De la depopulation de laFrance et des remides dy
apporter(Nancy, 1896), 23.
As far as I can tell, although his work was widely cited, he was never
asked to join the elite doctors who belonged to the Academie de mede-
cine. In 1895 he complained to the Societe de statistique de Paris that
doctors insisted on combating depopulation through medical means
because that kind of solution, although insufficient, was all that they
were trained to see.24 The mission statement of his repopulationist
pressure group, the Association pour l'accroissement de la population
francaise,
stressed the need to raise the birthrate and omitted any men-
tion of medicine. Instead, it promised "to call everyone's attention to
the risks which depopulation is causing for the French population and
to instigate fiscal and other measures to raise the birthrate." 25
Solidarists, on the other hand, were more likely to consider social
assistance programs for mothers, especially single mothers, hoping to
preserve not only legitimate but also illegitimate children. Further-
more, like the doctors whom Bertillon criticized, solidarists were more
likely to address depopulation by focusing on death, especially infant
death, and disease, especially venereal disease.
An example of the distinction between patriarchal patriotic and
solidarist positions which highlights their different views on relations
between women, men, the family, and the government is their response
to a common suggestion for combating depopulation: a tax on single
men. Patriarchal patriotJacques Bertillon believed that the proceeds of
such a tax should be redistributed to the fathers of four or more legiti-
mate children. Solidarist physician Charles Richet, on the other hand,
wanted to use the proceeds of such a tax to fund programs for pregnant
women and unmarried mothers. Bertillon and Richet differed over the
sex of the parent they sought to help, with Bertillon favoring assistance
to fathers and Richet favoring assistance to mothers. However, their
different proposals for the government redistribution of wealth also
show different attitudes toward the relationship between the govern-
ment and the family. Bertillon hoped that the money would be used to
reinforce the authority of men over their legitimate families. Richet,
on the other hand, was willing to bypass men to give money directly to
their pregnant wives. Furthermore, he also showed himself willing to
assist unmarried women founding illegitimate families.
A second example, which highlights the different attitudes of soli-
darists and patriarchal patriots not only toward the construction of the
family but also toward medicine as an agent of social change, occurred
24 Ibid., 22.
25
Bulletin national de lAssociation nationale pour l'accroissement de la population francaise,
no. 1
(15Jan. 1899): 1.
in 1890, when the Academie de medecine met to consider depopula-
tion for the fourth time in thirty years, and the second time in five. The
Academie began by listening to a presentation by Gustave Lagneau,
whose list of recommendations had grown since 1873 to include not
only incentives for fathers but social assistance programs for married
and single mothers. After the talk, Lagneau's longest exchange was
with Dr. Javal, an associate ofJacques Bertillon, who argued that social
programs for single mothers would be too costly and that doctors had
to shift their focus from infant mortality to the falling birthrate. The
Academie de medecine reserved its applause in this exchange for a
Dr. Rochard's attempt to resolve Lagneau and Javal's differences by
arguing that both of them had wandered away from medicine's pri-
mary concern with "hygiene ... the solid ground that properly belongs
to us." 26
Rochard's "solid ground" encompassed a great deal, allowing as
legitimate concerns not only venereal disease, sterility, and vaccinations
but also the reopening of tours where mothers could leave unwanted
children anonymously, the regulation of prostitutes and wet nurses,
and the expansion of urban sanitation, especially in high schools, bar-
racks, and prisons. However, it focused on medical regulation rather
than economic incentives, and despiteJaval's objections, it did nothing
to address the major demand of the repopulationists: direct interven-
tion in the question of the birthrate.
The Academie de medecine did eventually accept the birthrate
as a major issue, but when it did so, it redefined the problem in its
own terms as "the physiologico-medical element of our natality."
27 The
proceedings of its fifth investigation into depopulation, held in 1917,
finally recommended the censorship of contraceptive information, the
production of literature encouraging large families, and the reclassifi-
cation of abortion from a crime to a misdemeanor in order to move
abortion trials from impressionable juries to stern judges. However,
the Academie de medecine also continued to maintain its concern with
the health of young mothers by stressing the need for monetary as-
sistance to mothers and free hospitals for pregnant women.28 In other
words, even when the Academie shifted its emphasis from the preven-
tion of death and disease to the encouragement of birth, it maintained
26 Rochard in "Discussion sur la depopulation de la France," Bulletin de
lAcadgmie de midi-
cene, 3d ser., 24 (7 Oct. 1890): 419.
27 Charles Richet in "Sur la depopulation de la France," Bulletin de lAcadgmie de meidecine,
3d ser., 77 (15 May 1917): 604.
28
"Discussion ... sur la depopulation de la France," Bulletin de lAcadgmie de medecine, 3d
ser., 78 (23 Oct. 1917): 454-57.
its allegiance to the solidarist emphasis on women as the mothers of
future republican citizens.
Solidarist acceptance of feminist demands for such reforms as
paternity suits, divorce, and medical assistance for pregnant women
indicated their willingness to challenge both paternal authority and
family autonomy in favor of certain forms of government intervention.
However, it is also important to note the continuities between their
position and that of the patriarchal patriots. For example, Paul Strauss
and other solidarists were themselves thoroughly patriotic. Further-
more, although solidarists were more likely to work with feminists and
to acknowledge the needs of mothers, especially poor single mothers,
they too could treat women as less than equal. For example, although
Strauss participated in feminist congresses, worked with female phi-
lanthropists, and argued that women should be allowed to run bureaux
de bienfaisance, he also remained reluctant to admit women to adminis-
trative roles in the Assistance publique.29 Finally, although patriarchal
patriots and solidarists often advocated different kinds of reforms, they
both supported the regulation of birth control and abortion, which
they saw as a measure that would simultaneously raise the birthrate
and lower the infant death rate.
In 1902 the French government officially took notice of the de-
population crisis by establishing the first of several extraparliamentary
commissions on the question. Here the success of doctors and demog-
raphers in asserting their authority to talk about depopulation became
apparent. Over half the members of this commission of seventy-one
republican politicians, government officials, and business and profes-
sional men were doctors, administrators in public health or public
assistance programs, experts in demography and statistics, or mem-
bers of Bertillon's repopulationist pressure group. With the exception
of Eugene Brieux, a playwright with neo-Malthusian sympathies, the
commission was divided between the patriarchal patriots with their em-
phasis on paternal authority, and solidarist republicans who supported
maternal assistance.30 Since Royer's early intervention at the Societe
d'anthropologie, many republican feminists had argued that depopu-
lation could only be addressed by combating what Maria Deraismes
had called "masculine privilege," ensuring the rights of man and the
rights of children by extending full legal equality to women.3' However,
29
Rachel G. Fuchs, "The Right to Life: Paul Strauss and the Politics of
Motherhood,"
in
Accampo, Fuchs, and Stewart, Gender and the Politics of Social Reform, 82-105.
30
Offen, "Depopulation, Nationalism, and Feminism," 668-71.
31 Deraismes, "De la depopulation," 2.
despite feminist objections, no women were named to the commission.
Furthermore, the question of women's individual rights as opposed to
their maternal obligations never made it onto the agenda.
The most dramatic result of the commission's work, and the gov-
ernment's first direct response to depopulation, was the law of 1920,
regulating abortion, birth control, and information about either sub-
ject. This law had begun as a proposal to provide financial incentives
to civil servants in 1910. The next section of this essay follows the devel-
opment of the parliamentary debate from the early stages to the later
ones to show how the law of 1920, which started as a proposal with a
patriarchal patriotic emphasis on fathers and demography, ended as a
law with a solidarist focus on mothers and medicine.
In 1910 Dr. Odilon-Marc Lannelongue, one of the republican sena-
tors who had served on the commission, made one of the first legal
proposals based on its work. Lannelongue was a surgeon, a member
of the radical and radical socialist Left, and the vice president of the
parliamentary medical group.32 As a doctor with radical sympathies,
Lannelongue might have been expected to advocate social programs
for women. However, although his lengthy report to the Commission
on Depopulation briefly mentioned the "protection of mothers, as-
sistance, maternity homes, [and] convalescent homes for women in
childbirth and new mothers" as ways of combating infant mortality, his
legal proposal itself actually advocated a classic patriarchal patriotic
solution: economic incentives for the fathers of large families. Despite
his earlier acknowledgment that "one cannot refuse to feminists the
right of women to work," his admiration for women whose incomes
supported elderly parents, and his understanding that children were a
"burden" to working women, Lannelongue's actual proposal contained
no provisions for women.33 The vast majority of his report on depopu-
lation, the entire introduction to his legal proposal, and all the articles
of his law centered on ways to encourage population growth by modi-
fying the behavior of men. Lannelongue focused particularly on the
need to help the underpaid civil servant, who "is not and cannot be
the prolific father of a family."
34
Lannelongue knew the medical arguments about the dangers of
32
"Odilon-Marc Lannelongue," in Dictionnaire des parlementairesfrancais: Notices biographiques
sur les ministres, deputes, et senateurs francais de 1889 d 1940, ed. Jean Jolly et al. (Paris, 1960-77),
6:2124-25.
33 Lannelongue, "Rapport sur la depopulation de la France," reprinted and appended to
Besnard, Journal officiel de la
R~publiquefranpaise,
Documents parlementaires du Sgnat, 21 Nov. 1912,
Annexe 354, 68-69.
34 Lannelongue, Journal
officiel,
Documents du Sgnat, 16 June 1910, Annexe 311, 965.
infant mortality. When he joined the Extraparliamentary Commission
on Depopulation in 1902, he served as the president of its subcom-
mittee on mortality. However, in his proposal to the senate he stressed
that declining natality was the more pressing issue. His solution was an
incentive plan for male civil servants: extra military service for bache-
lors over twenty-nine years of age; prohibitions on government civil
service for men who had not been married, widowed, or divorced by
age twenty-five; and advantages in promotion and pension levels for
civil servants with three or more children. Despite his position on the
Left, Lannelongue also included a classic LePlayist demand, elimina-
tion of the article in the Civil Code that required fathers to leave their
property equally divided among their children. He concluded by com-
paring the fight against depopulation to an actual war, in which "every
citizen has the duty to contribute to the perpetuity of his country, as
he has the obligation to be ready to fight for it if necessary."35
The senate accepted Lannelongue's proposal and sent it to a com-
mittee headed by Lannelongue himself. When Lannelongue died in
1911, the committee members continued to meet under the new leader-
ship of solidarist Paul Strauss. Senator Besnard deposited their first
report in November of 1912, and they added a supplementary report
in December of the same year.
Paul Strauss had been deeply involved in radical politics ever since
1871, when he started writing for Les Droits de l'homme, became a regu-
lar columnist for Le Radical, and supported the policies of Gambetta.
Elected to the Paris Municipal Council in 1883, he became interested
in public health and public assistance, issues which he continued to
support after his election to the senate in 1897 as a member of the
democratic Left.36 Like Strauss, Felix Besnard sat and voted with the
democratic Left in the senate.37 In the reports which Besnard pro-
duced for Strauss's committee, he explained their support for a new
legal proposal which was based on Lannelongue's original but included
radically different provisions.
The new proposal supported Lannelongue's decision to focus on
births rather than deaths, but in every other respect it had dramatically
changed. Paul Strauss and his colleagues had recast Lannelongue's
patriarchal patriotic proposal in a solidarist mold. The most important
concerns in the new proposal which Strauss and Besnard presented
35 Ibid.
36 "Paul Strauss," in
Jolly, et al., Dictionnaire des
parlementaires francais,
8:3036-37. See also
Fuchs, "The Right to Life," in Gender and the Politics of Social Reform, 82-105.
37 "Felix Alexandre Franfois Besnard,"
injolly,
et al., Dictionnaire des parlementairesfrancais,
2:587.
to the senate early in 1913 were no longer economic incentives for
fathers but medical controls on doctors and women. Where Lanne-
longue's original proposal had focused on the regulation of fatherhood
by encouraging men to marry and have children, the revised proposal
presented by Besnard focused on the regulation of motherhood by
preventing women from using contraceptives, inducing miscarriages,
or having abortions. Furthermore, where Lannelongue's proposal had
focused on men's interactions with the army and the civil service, the
Strauss/Besnard proposal focused almost exclusively on women's inter-
actions with the medical profession. On the one hand, it extended
the regulatory authority of doctors by putting them in charge of the
"administrative surveillance" of maternity wards; on the other hand,
it raised the penalties for doctors, surgeons, or midwives involved
in abortion and added penalties for those who advocated or offered
contraception.38 However, whether doctors were being empowered or
limited by the proposal, in either case their relationships with their
female patients were now located at the center of the problem.
For example, although Lannelongue had characterized depopu-
lation in medical terms as "a social and national illness, a formidable
and an abstract ailment ... which is slowly killing us," he had reserved
his highest praise not for doctors but for the "sociologists, economists,
and demographers who first occupied themselves with the future of
our country." 39 Besnard's own report, by contrast, characterized medi-
cine as a "sort of priesthood" and immediately linked "the superior
interest of the honor of families" with the "free exercise of the medi-
cal practice."40 Besnard's second report included Paul Strauss's report
to the Extraparliamentary Commission on Depopulation, which privi-
leged medicine over demography by acknowledging Bertillon's work
but concluded, "Whatever respect one professes for the teachings of
demography, it has not yet emerged from the place of criticism." To
move from social criticism to social change, Strauss turned to medi-
cine, requesting "more generous endowment of research laboratories at
medical faculties" and suggesting doctors for a wide range of duties, in-
cluding the supervision of midwives, the inspection of maternity wards,
the instruction of young mothers, the control of the sale of milk, and
the observation of schools, army barracks, and naval ships for signs of
disease among students, faculty, soldiers, and sailors.4'
The shift from Lannelongue's patriarchal patriotic proposal to the
38
Besnard, Journal officiel, Documents du Sgnat, 21 Nov. 1912, Annexe 354, 44-74.
39 Lannelongue, "Rapport sur la depopulation de la France," 44-46.
40
Besnard, Journal officiel, Documents du Sgnat, 21 Nov. 1912, Annexe 354, 43.
41
Strauss, "Rapport general sur les causes de la mortalit6," reprinted and appended to
Besnard, Journal
officiel,
Documents du Sgnat, 19 Dec. 1912, Annexe 402, 144, 151.
solidarist proposal of Strauss and Besnard entailed not only a shift from
the arguments of demography to those of medicine but also a shift
from Lannelongue's focus on fatherhood to a new focus on mother-
hood. For example, Strauss's appendix to Besnard's report included
two sections on programs for expectant and new mothers, arguing that
"a fully organized maternal assistance program . .. will do more than
any repressive disposition to limit the number of criminal abortions
and abortive attempts."42
Feminists had argued that such a focus on motherhood would
increase the rights and liberties of women. However, Strauss and
Besnard's focus on motherhood was more ambiguous in its implica-
tions. Although Strauss himself always expressed his desire for mater-
nal assistance programs as the most effective solution for depopulation,
the proposal itself focused not on providing positive supports for poor
mothers but simply on regulating abortion as an unacceptable alterna-
tive to pregnancy. Furthermore, Strauss's appendix and the committee's
proposal extended this regulation to the censorship of contraceptive
information as well.
The proceedings of Strauss's commission do not reveal why the
members decided that abortion was "the special and fundamental"
question or why they reworked Lannelongue's proposal in such a dra-
matic fashion. Although the proposal was still called the "proposition
Lannelongue," not a single one of the original articles remained. How-
ever, if the reasons for the commission's new focus on abortion were
obscure, the results were clear enough. Where Lannelongue's pro-
posal had focused on fathers, the Besnard/Strauss revision looked at
mothers. Furthermore, where Lannelongue's proposal had been a sys-
tem of social and economic measures, the revision made depopulation
into a medical issue. Finally, where Lannelongue's proposal had offered
a balance of regulations and positive incentives, the revision was far
more repressive. It punished women for seeking to avoid childbirth
without offering any help in raising the children they might have as a
result.
The senate's reaction to the new proposal was mixed. Roman
Catholics on the Right approved the bill but argued that until French
republicans returned to religion, abandoning reforms such as secular
education, divorce, and the legitimation of children born out of adul-
tery, the population would continue to fall.43 For example, Charles
Riou, the conservative senator from Brittany, gained applause from the
42 Ibid., 145, 146-47.
43 See, for example, Charles Riou and the comte de las Cases, Journal
officiel
de la Republique
fran~aise, Dgbats parlementaires du Sgnat, 31Jan. 1913, 32; LeonJenouvrier, Journal
officiel,
Dgbats du
Stgnat, 6 Feb. 1913, 42-44.
Right when he characterized the entire republican program as "a blow
at the family" and, hence, a major cause of depopulation.44 He claimed
to know a Roman Catholic family with twelve children denied public
assistance by a republican administrator who felt that France did not
need any more Catholic children.
Speakers on the Left, on the other hand, criticized the proposed
legislation for not providing women with alternatives to abortion and
for censoring contraceptive information. Simeon Flaissieres, a social-
ist doctor from Marseilles, argued that contraception should remain
legal and women should receive lighter penalties for abortion. Preg-
nant women were not responsible for their actions because they were
not in a "normal [mental] state."45 The true culprits in his eyes were
doctors, surgeons, and midwives, who should suffer not only fines and
jail terms but the suspension of their licenses. He concluded to ap-
plause on the Left when he urged the senate to "temper the planned
repression of women" but levy "the maximum penalty" against their
abortionists instead.46
Even Paul Strauss, the head of the commission which had re-
vised the Lannelongue proposal, expressed his belief that the proposal
would be ineffective if the government did not provide support for the
women who bore children as a complement to its repression of abor-
tion and birth control. He argued, "Of all the means which are avail-
able to us, the only one which will be complete will be the organization
of a true, generous, and complete maternal assistance program."47 To
this end, he promised to support any projects that would
contribute to the teaching of mothers and the development of ideas
about infant hygiene among the women of the people . .. [as well
as] assistance to large families . . . and maternal assistance itself
through maternal insurance, charity, work shelters, obstetrical dis-
pensaries, medical help for pregnancy, convalescent homes, mater-
nal cafeterias, nurseries, etc."48
Nevertheless, Strauss's call for this exhaustive list of programs did not
keep him from recommending that the senate pass the proposal, claim-
ing, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, that it was on "a terrain
where no political dissidence intervenes."49 His ability to move from
advocating help for women who had children to passing a law pro-
44 Charles Riou, Journal
officiel, Debats du Sinat, 31
Jan. 1913, 25.
45 Simeon Flaissieres, Journal
officiel, Debats
du
Senat,
1 Feb.
1913,
35.
46 Ibid.
47 Paul Strauss, Journal
officiel,
Dibats du Sgnat, 6 Feb. 1913, 42.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.
hibiting women from not having children indicates the dark side of the
ideology of republican motherhood.
The proposal, if passed, would affect doctors, women, and neo-
Malthusian activists. However, the medical domination of the issue was
shown by the fact that most of the senate's discussions centered on the
role of doctors. For example, in 1913 the first heated debate was over
how to organize and whether to fund the medical surveillance of ma-
ternity homes. While some senators wondered who would pay for the
medical staff to run the inspections, others feared that the decisions
on which projects to fund would be made politically, leading to what
royalist senator Dominique Delahaye characterized as "government
maternity homes and opposition maternity homes."50 Paul Cazeneuve,
a radical senator with a medical degree and teaching experience at
the Faculte de medecine de Lyon, responded to these concerns with
a series of reports and proposals in which the majority of the articles
dealt neither with abortion nor with contraception but with the linked
medical and governmental control of birthing procedures.51
In 1918 again, one of the most heated debates continued to focus
on the role of doctors, now considering the question of whether they
should be allowed, or even required, to break patient confidentiality
by testifying in abortion trials. Even when the senate discussed the pos-
sibility of offering women immunity from prosecution if they would
identify their abortionists, their major concern was not whether women
should escape unjust prosecution but whether freedom from prose-
cution would accidentally enable unscrupulous women to blackmail
doctors instead of turning them over to trial.52
The senate
passed
the
proposal
to the chamber in
January 1919,
but although the chamber sent it on to committee, the deputies never
brought it to the floor for discussion.53 Instead, on 23 July 1920, as the
chamber of deputies was closing its session, republican deputy Edouard
Ignace deposited and demanded the immediate discussion of a pro-
posal "tending to repress provocation to abortion and anticonceptional
propaganda."54 Ignace was a member of the republican Left who had
50
Dominique Delahaye, Journal officiel, Debats du Senat, 7 Feb. 1913, 54. For biographical
information on Delahaye see "Dominique-Julien Delahaye," in Jolly, et al., Dictionnaire des parle-
mentairesfrancais, 4:1292-96.
51
See Paul Cazeneuve, Journal officiel, Documents du Senat, 11 Dec. 1913, Annexe 449; 8 Feb.
1917, Annexe 31; 10 Jan. 1918, Annexe 3, 1-10. For biographical information on Cazeneuve see
"Paul Jean-Baptiste Cazeneuve," in Jolly, et al., Dictionnaire des parlementairesfrancais, 3:921-22.
52 Paul Cazeneuve and respondents, Journal officiel, Debats du Senat, 21 Nov. 1918, 775-82.
53 The report of Georges Leredu was published in Journal
officiel
de la Republiquefrancaise,
Documents parlementaires de la Chambre des deputes, 7 Aug. 1919, Annexe 6679, 2347-52.
54 Edouard Ignace, Journal
officiel,
Documents de la Chambre, 23July 1920, Annexe 1357, 2065.
served in the radical cabinets of Leon Bourgeois, Brisson, and Dupuy.
In 1919 he had been reelected as a member of Alexandre Millerand's
Union republicaine, nationale et sociale.55
Ignace claimed to have abstracted from the original proposal the
most urgent articles, ones which the chamber should easily be able
to agree on passing. In his view, the most important provisions were
those which would prevent "provocation to abortion and propaganda
about malthusian and anticonceptional methods." To rally support, he
reminded his audience, "This propaganda, dangerous for the country,
has an origin which is not French."56 Evoking the memory of French
losses in World War I, he continued,
On the day after a war where almost 1,500,000 Frenchmen sacrificed
their life so that France would have the right to live in indepen-
dence and honor, it is intolerable that other Frenchmen have the
right to draw substantial incomes from the multiplication of abor-
tions and anticonceptional propaganda.57
Unlike the complicated proposal which had immobilized the
chamber, Ignace's proposal consisted of a few simple articles. The first
proposed fines of up to three thousand francs and sentences of up to
three years for anyone who recommended abortion, whether or not
this advice led any particular woman to seek an abortion. The second
article recommended the same punishment for anyone who sold or
distributed "remedies, substances, instruments, or any objects knowing
that they were intended to commit the crime of abortion, even if the
abortion was not achieved or attempted and even if [they] were really
incapable of producing one." The third and fourth articles extended
the proposal from abortion to contraception, prescribing a sentence
of up to five thousand francs and six months in prison for anyone who
sold, distributed, or discussed "procedures" or "secret remedies" to
prevent pregnancy, even if they did not work.58
Ignace's reading of this proposal was met with applause. Gustave
L'Hopiteau, the radical republican minister of justice, expressed the
hope of the government that the chamber would approve the Ignace
proposal, immediately provoking further applause. Rene Lafarge, the
head of the commission on civil and criminal legislation, which was
already reviewing the longer proposal passed by the senate, received
55 "Edouard Louis Ignace,
"
injolly,
et al., Dictionnaire des parlementairesfrancais, 6:1985-86.
56
Edouard Ignace, Journal officiel de la Ripubliquefrancaise, Debats parlementaires de la Cham-
bre des dtputis, 23 July 1920, 3068.
57 Ignace, Journal
officiel,
Dibats de la Chambre, 23 July 1920, 3068.
58 Ibid.
yet more applause when he reported that the entire commission rec-
ommended a positive vote.59 Like Ignace, he stressed the role of the
Great War: "[This propaganda] becomes criminal on the day after a war
as frightful as the one we have just experienced, when France, to pur-
sue her destiny, has the most urgent need to increase her natality."60
This demonstration of republican unity was broken almost solely
by criticism from members of the unified socialist party, making, ironi-
cally, the kinds of arguments about anticlericalism, free speech, and
due process that one might have expected from republicans in other
contexts. For example, communist Andre Berthon provoked frequent
interruptions from the Right, when he asked pointedly if "the celibacy
of nuns and priests [could] be considered propaganda against natality."
The chamber erupted in "diverse movements . . . noise . . . [and] ex-
clamations" when he asked, 'Are you going to condemn pharmacists
who sell . . . let's speak plainly . . . condoms?" He warned that if the
law were passed, it would be too easy to accuse people of breaking it,
and he concluded by objecting to the sudden introduction of the pro-
posal, characterizing it as a series of "laws of surprise." 'And control,"
added his socialist colleague Alexandre Blanc.61
Adolphe Pinard, a gynecologist and former member of the Extra-
parliamentary Commission on Depopulation, was the sole radical re-
publican to speak out against the proposal. Pinard was the popularizer
of puexiculture, the organized medical training of young women into
mothers who understood the scientific aspects of childcare. Unlike the
socialists, however, Pinard's objections had less to do with arguments
over the treatment of women than they did with his worries about the
authority of the medical profession. Speaking from a medical point of
view, he complained that the proposal made no allowance for abor-
tions which were medically necessary. Furthermore, he pointed out,
the second article, which prohibited the sale of implements for abor-
tion, could not possibly work because "the first object to hand, [even]
a penholder can be used to this end." He concluded, "If you brought
us the certitude of augmenting our French natality in quantity and
in quality, I would vote for your proposal with both hands, but you
59 For biographical information on L'Hopiteau and Lafarge see "Gustave Emile Joseph
L'Hopiteau" and "Prosper Uon Ren6 Lafarge," in Jolly, et al., Dictionnaire des parlementaires fran-
(ais,
6:2278-79, 2087-88.
60
Ren6 Lafarge, Journal officiel, Dibats de la Chambre, 23 July 1920, 3068.
61
Andre Berthon and Alexandre Blanc, Journal officiel, Dibats de la Chambre, 23 July 1920,
3069. For biographical information on Alexandre Blanc see "Marius Henri Alexandre-Blanc," in
Jolly, et al., Dictionnaire des parlementairesfrancais, 1: 357-58.
are bringing us nothing but the shadow of repression; in fact, you are
bringing us nothing." 62
Pinard's objections were dismissed by Rene Lafarge, who argued
that his complaints might apply to the larger proposal but had nothing
to do with the abbreviated one on the floor. Gilbert Laurent, a mem-
ber of the parliamentary medical group, added that he saw no threat
to medical authority, that he planned to vote for the bill, and that he
hoped that his "colleagues and medical friends" would too.63 Laurent
had often worked on medical issues in parliament, including both gen-
eral social questions, such as public health and the care of abandoned
children, and more narrow professional questions, such as the medical
inspection of primary schools and the organization of medical educa-
tion itself.64 By stressing his medical expertise in his reply to Pinard, he
continued the trend of seeing depopulation as a medical issue.
The chamber adopted the Ignace proposal by an overwhelming
vote of 521 to 55.65 Returned to the senate a week later, on 29July 1920,
it was adopted there with no discussion except the recommendation
of Guillaume Poulle that it be passed immediately and this conclud-
ing comment from another radical, Henry Cheron: "The legislator has
just done his duty; it remains to be hoped that the courts will do theirs
in applying the law." 66
The final debates of 1920 in the chamber of deputies were dif-
ferent from the earlier senate debates of 1913 in several ways. First of
all, anticlericalism was expressed not by republicans but by socialists.
Second, the bill was passed by a huge majority after a minimum of
discussion. Both of these developments were consistent with the gen-
eral tenor of postwar politics. During World War I, the union sacree
had temporarily united members of all political parties from socialist
radicals to conservative Roman Catholics.67 In the elections of 1919,
the first to be held after the war, the Bloc national which gained the
majority had united moderate republicans and clerical conservatives
against socialists. In this process, the republican emphasis on anticleri-
calism had temporarily faded away, and the new government had even
62 Pinard, Journal
officiel, Dibats de la Chambre, 23 July 1920, 3070.
63
Gilbert Laurent, Journal officiel, Dibats de la Chambre, 23July 1920, 3070.
64
"Gilbert Laurent, dit Gilbert-Laurent," in Jolly, et al., Dictionnaire des parlementaires fran-
(ais,
6:2157-58.
65Journal
officiel,
Dibats de la Chambre, 23 July 1920, 3074.
66
Henry Cheron, Journal officiel, Dibats du Snat, 29 July 1920, 1562. For biographical in-
formation on Cheron and Poulle see "Henry Frederic Cheron" and "Guillaume Joseph Poulle,"
injolly,
et al., Dictionnaire des
parlementairesfrancais, 3:1033-37, 7:2740.
67 Gordon R. Wright, France in Modern Times: From the Enlightenment to the Present, 3d ed.
(NewYork, 1981), 319.
restored diplomatic relations with the Vatican and exempted the newly
reacquired territory of Alsace from the separation laws of 1905.68
From the introduction of Lannelongue's proposal in 1910 to the
passage of the law in 1920, the debates clearly show the importance of
doctors in defining the issues in the debate over depopulation. Odilon-
Marc Lannelongue, the author of the initial proposal, was a doctor;
Paul Strauss, who supported it in its later solidarist form, was closely
associated with the Academie de medecine. The only republican oppo-
sition to Ignace's final version was from Adolphe Pinard, yet another
doctor, whose primary concern was that the bill was medically un-
sound. Pinard's worries were effectively countered by Gilbert Laurent's
assertion that other physician-legislators supported the bill. Through-
out the debates, when speakers wanted authoritative confirmation of
their opinions, they cited medical evidence. Doctors became less im-
portant in parliament in the 1920s, but they continued to expand their
influence over motherhood through increasing intervention in the ad-
ministration of maternity wards.69
However, although the development of the debates shows the im-
portance of a medical model of depopulation, it also shows that doctors
could disagree among themselves about how to work with this model.
For example, although Lannelongue and Paul Cazeneuve were both
doctors, the elaborate solidarist proposal which Strauss and Cazeneuve
defended in 1913 and 1918 had no resemblance to the initial patriar-
chal patriotic proposal which Lannelongue had deposited in 1910. In
the debates of 1913, Simeon Flaissieres, yet another doctor, opposed
the solidarist proposal because of his socialist politics, explaining that
he could speak his mind because "I do not feel myself held to . . .
good will for current society."
70 Even the abbreviated Ignace proposal,
which passed with overwhelming support in 1920, was critiqued both
on medical grounds by Pinard and on political grounds by some social-
ists, including a socialist doctor, Paul Morucci, who surrounded his
medical opinions with criticisms of the French government. These con-
flicts among doctors themselves suggest that republicans' positions on
how to address depopulation and whether to regulate abortion and
birth control had as much to do with their political opinions as with
their medical backgrounds.
Historians have not looked kindly on the republicans for passing
68 Ibid., 345.
69
For the declining parliamentary importance of doctors see Ellis, Physician-Legislators of
France, 239-44; for the medicalization of maternity see Yvonne Knibiehler and Catherine Fou-
quet, La Femme et les medecins: Analyse histoarique (Paris, 1983).
70 Flaissieres, Journal
officiel,
Debats du Sgnat, 1 Feb. 1913, 35.
the abortion and contraception law in 1920, seeing the passage of this
repressive measure as a violation of the republican ideals of free speech
and individual rights.71 These writers seem to see the main effect of
the 1920 law as a censorship of speech about abortion and birth con-
trol, a censorship shockingly and disappointingly incompatible with
the essential republican goal of liberal toleration for conflicting ideas.
If one sees the law of 1920 as primarily important for its impact
on speech, noting the subsequent silencing of French neo-Malthusian
activists, then its passage may indeed come as a shock. However, if
one looks at the law in the context of solidarist republican and medi-
cal theories of gender and the relationship between the family and the
state, its passage makes perfect, if sinister, sense.
The most recent history of the law of 1920 has argued that the law
would not have been passed if not for the particular cultural context
of postwar revival in which republican men, scarred by the experience
of war and scared of the many difficult projects involved in rebuilding
the nation, sought to restore order and comfort by invoking conser-
vative gender roles.72 The postwar crisis undoubtedly exacerbated the
republican interest in passing this law, but at the same time we need
to acknowledge that there is nothing in the law which is incompatible
with solidarist republican attitudes from the period before the war.
The Roman Catholic senators in the earlier debates over abortion,
birth control, and the medical regulation of births had labeled the
republican vision as individualist, destroying the family. However, by
1913, despite their accusations, it had been decades since most repub-
licans espoused the radical individualism laid out in the Declaration
of the Rights of Man. Solidarism, which had become the dominant
form of republican social and political theory at the end of the nine-
teenth century, stressed fraternity, not liberty. Furthermore, ever since
the French Revolution, male republican politicians had been divided
over the extent to which the "rights of man" included the "rights of
woman," or "fraternity" included "sorority."73
At the fin de siecle, arguments over depopulation occurred in the
context of larger literary, artistic, social, and political debates over the
71 See, for example, Ronsin, Greve des ventres, 149; Mouvement franais pour le planning
familial, D'une revolte d une lutte: 25 ans du planningfamilial (Paris, 1982), 26.
72 Mary Louise Roberts, Civilization without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France,
191 7-1927 (Chicago, 1994), 93-147.
73 For a brief sampling of the scholarly literature on this question see Lynn Hunt, ed.,
Eroticism and the Body Politic (Baltimore, Md., 1991); Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French
Revolution (Berkeley, Calif., 1992); Carol Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford, Calif., 1988);
and
Joan
Wallach Scott, "Olympe
de
Gouges
and the
Rights
of 'Man,"' History Workshop Journal,
no. 28 (autumn 1989): 1-21.
role of the independent "New Woman" and what Michelle Perrot has
labeled a "masculinity crisis."74 Women's lives did change, with bour-
geoises and ouvrieres alike entering the public world of work in ever
greater numbers. However, these changes occurred in tandem with
continued emphasis on women's maternity. For example, women in
new professions as teachers, doctors, and nurses were seen as mothers
who made their feminine devotion and self-sacrifice public. Similarly,
the Schmahl Law of 1907, giving married women control over their
own earnings, was passed in the belief that working women had a com-
mitment to caring for their children that working men did not.75
Coming on the heels of fin de siecle tensions over gender roles
and sexual behavior, the death of a generation of French men and
the temporary entry of French women into nontraditional occupations
during World War I only heightened preexisting anxieties about de-
population.76 For example, the Academie de medecine's 1917 debate
on the topic grew out of the work of a commission which had been
set up to investigate the work of women and children in war factories,
but it was also the fifth in a series of such debates which had begun in
1867. Pronatalists talked about the need to raise the birthrate in mili-
tary terms long before the French experience in World War I fulfilled
their deepest fears of French weakness.
In this context, the feminist use of republican motherhood to gain
women's rights could become a liability by making their contribution
as mothers more important than their claims for legal equality in areas
such as the suffrage, which was denied them in 1922. Women had a
place in the Third Republic as mothers of future citizens, but little suc-
cess in their claims to equal treatment in their own right.
Perhaps the most telling example of many male republicans' fun-
damental unwillingness to see women as actors occurred in Ignace's
justification for the law of 1920 itself. Speaking on behalf of the French
men who had fought in the war, he called for an end to the prac-
74 Michelle Perrot, "The New Eve and the Old Adam," in Behind the Lines: Gender and the
Two World Wars, ed. Margaret Higonnet et al. (New Haven, Conn., 1987), 51. For a more recent
history of the construction of masculinity in France see Robert Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of
Honor in Modern France (Oxford, 1993).
75 See Perrot, "New Eve and the Old Adam," in Higonnet, et al., Behind the Lines; and
Debora Silverman, "The 'New Woman,' Feminism, and the Decorative Arts in Fin de Sikcle
France," in Hunt, Eroticism and the Body Politic.
76 See Perrot, "New Eve and the Old Adam," in Higonnet, et al., Behind the Lines; and
Steven C. Hause, "More Minerva than Mars: The French Women's Rights Campaign and the First
World War," in Higonnet, et al., Behind the Lines, 99-113. For more on the gender anxiety gen-
erated by World War I, see Mary Louise Roberts, "'This Civilization No Longer Has Sexes': La
Garconne and Cultural Crisis in France after World War I," Gender and History 4 (Spring 1992):
49-69; and Roberts, Civilization without Sexes.
tices of the French men who advocated abortion and birth control.
He never mentioned women in his speech, even as he organized the
passage of a law whose effect would be to regulate not only their be-
havior but their bodies. Fifty years after Royer's claim that women held
the key to addressing depopulation, Ignace could successfully work to
coerce their cooperation by restricting their reproductive choices with-
out even mentioning them by name. Despite many changes in women's
lives and legal status during the first half of the Third Republic, on a
rhetorical level at least, the dominant republican politics of the family
could still function on the exclusion of women.
This exclusion recalls the censorship of Royer with which I opened
this essay. The confrontation between Royer and the rest of the Societe
d'anthropologie presents a dramatically polarized picture: on one side,
male anthropologists, doctors, donors, and government officials; on
the other, a lone woman. The law of 1920 fits the same pattern: on one
side, male legislators with small families, reserving their right to use
condoms; on the other side, the regulated bodies of women. However,
the same polarization that makes these incidents so dramatic is also
what makes them potentially misleading. They seem to indicate that
the story of the French depopulation crisis can be told simply in terms
of the opposition of male and female interests, ending unhappily in
the domination of women by men.
There are several problems with this interpretation. First of all,
unlike Royer in 1873, most French women, even feminists, did not de-
mand abortion rights and did not themselves see the law of 1920 as
a defeat for women.77 French republican feminists such as Deraismes
and Edwards-Pilliet furthered their demands for legal equality and full
citizenship by stressing the support that they needed to be better re-
publican mothers. The Conseil national des femmes
francaises
actually
supported legal restrictions on abortion and birth control as the com-
plement to their advocacy of a wide range of maternal assistance pro-
grams. Furthermore, although republican feminists did not achieve
the suffrage until after World War II, they did succeed in obtaining
a wide variety of social welfare initiatives to help women, both before
World War I and, especially, from 1920 to 1950.78
The second problem is that the immediate target of the law of
1920 was not contracepting women but the predominantly male neo-
77 Ronsin, La Grkve des ventres, 157-63.
78 See Fuchs, "France in a Comparative Perspective," in Accampo, Fuchs, and Stewart,
Gender and the Politics of Social Reform; Michel and Koven, "Womanly Duties"; and Karen Offen,
"Body Politics: Women, Work, and the Politics of Motherhood in France, 1920-1950," in Bock
and Thane, Maternity and Gender Policies.
Malthusian social activists who publicized contraception as part of a
socialist plan for peace and working-class prosperity. The birthrate in
France continued to drop after the passage of the law, which indicates
that men and women continued to contracept, but the neo-Malthusian
movement was effectively crushed.79 Men held political power in France
and women did not, but this did not mean that all men were free to
express their political opinions.
However, despite these complications, I would still argue that the
distinction between productive men and reproductive women should
be seen not only as a system of gender difference, regulating men and
women alike, but also as a system of gender hierarchy. The solidarist re-
publican claim that public working men and private mothering women
were complementary halves of one whole obscures the fact that the
male half of that pair usually held legal authority both in the world and
at home. Although republican feminists used the language of mother-
hood to demand rights for women, solidarists were never as willing to
grant women's rights as they were to define their responsibilities. This
brings us back to the kinds of contraception covered by the law of
1920: all female methods, but not the use of condoms. Although the
republican ideology of gender governed male and female alike, in the
law of 1920 it aimed particularly at limiting the reproductive decisions
of women.
Foucault has argued that the new focus on biopower resulted in
"infinitesimal surveillances, permanent controls, extremely meticulous
orderings of space, indeterminate medical or psychological examina-
tions, . . . statistical assessments and interventions aimed at the entire
social body or at groups taken as a whole."80 All these operations, or
the desire for them, are readily apparent in the debates over depopu-
lation. When republican doctors and their solidarist allies demanded
the medical regulation not only of maternity wards, midwives, and wet
nurses but also of barracks, schools, and prisons, they clearly wanted
to extend their authority throughout the entire population, regardless
of sex.
However, when Foucault mentioned this regulatory intervention
in the case of "birth controls," he neglected to notice what the debate
over depopulation also makes abundantly clear, that this intervention
worked differently for men and women. When republican doctors and
legislators regulated abortion and contraception, they sought to ex-
tend their authority not only throughout the general population, but
79 McLaren, Sexuality and Social Order, 131-83.
80 Foucault, History of Sexuality, 1:145-46.
especially into the heart of the family, where a couple's private decision
about how many children to have was cast as a matter of compelling
public interest. To make this kind of intervention, they directed their
efforts particularly toward restricting women's choices about whether
and when to have children. In other words, the solidarist consolidation
of medicalized authority over family life came at the expense, not of
men, who at least retained their reproductive autonomy, but of women.

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