Thousands protest against sexual violence in France | European Union News

Hundreds of individuals have taken to the streets throughout France to protest in opposition to sexual violence.

The protests on Saturday come two days earlier than the Worldwide Day for the Elimination of Violence Towards Girls.

Within the capital, Paris, massive crowds of ladies and men marched waving purple placards that denounced gender-based violence and defended girls’s reproductive rights.

Demonstrators voiced considerations a few attainable rollback on girls’s rights in america when President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White Home in January. Vice President-elect JD Vance mentioned he would love a nationwide abortion ban in a podcast interview in 2022, however has since emphasised that particular person states ought to decide their insurance policies.

The French newspaper Le Monde reported that roughly 80,000 protesters took to the streets in Paris, with 400 totally different organisations participating in demonstrations. It mentioned 1000’s of individuals additionally took to the streets in smaller cities throughout the nation, together with 1,500 in Renne exterior Lyon within the southeastern a part of France.

France enshrined abortion rights within the structure in March — a transfer largely seen as a response to the US transfer to roll again key reproductive rights protections in 2022 when the Supreme Court docket overturned decades-old legal guidelines defending abortion rights nationally. Whereas abortion has been authorized since 1975 in France, the constitutional change explicitly assured abortion entry. France was the primary nation on the planet to take action.

Protesters additionally voiced solidarity with Gisele Pelicot, whose ex-husband Dominique Pelicot and 50 different co-defendants are on trial over allegations that the boys drugged and raped her whereas she was unconscious over a decade. In September, Dominique accepted the costs.

“Sadly, anyone is usually a perpetrator of violence. It may be our brothers. It may be our fathers. It may be our colleagues. It may be our bosses. I feel that’s the massive shock for folks,” mentioned Maelle Noir, representing the feminist collective Nous Toutes, which interprets as All of Us, informed The Related Press information company on the Paris protest.