1963–1964 clandestine abortion

The 1963–1964 clandestine abortion is the central ordeal recounted in Annie Duchesne’s narrative: a determined decision made without lawful medical care, carried out through informal assistance, and followed by a life-threatening emergency. Its course—from the first confirmation of pregnancy in November 1963 to hospitalization in January 1964—shows how private choice was constrained by criminal prohibition, class, and the absence of safe services. In retrospect, Duchesne presents the experience not only as an episode of physical danger but as material that she eventually turns into writing.

Discovery and decision

In early October 1963, Duchesne had a sexual relationship with P, a political science student she had met during the summer. She had relied on the Ogino method, although she later recognized that the timing made pregnancy possible. On November 8, after mistaking morning sickness for stomach trouble, she visited Doctor N, a gynecologist, who confirmed the pregnancy and prescribed injections intended to restore bleeding. Duchesne recorded the news in her diary as a nightmare.

The injections did not resolve the uncertainty. During a stay with her parents over the Armistice Day weekend, a brief discharge led her to hope that the pregnancy had ended. When Doctor N confirmed that she remained pregnant and sent a pregnancy certificate, its stated delivery date—July 8, 1964—made a future child suddenly legible to her. She tore up the certificate. The document’s destruction marks a decisive change from anxious speculation to commitment: she would not continue the pregnancy.

Duchesne told P that she was pregnant and did not intend to keep it. Their relationship had not seemed likely to continue, and she expected that he would be relieved by her decision. She later connected the pregnancy to her working-class background. The first member of her family to pursue higher education, she nevertheless understood poverty and social stigma as forces that shaped her circumstances. In her account, the pregnancy seemed to her like a mark of social failure, not a future she had chosen.

Finding clandestine help

Duchesne initially thought an abortion would be difficult but manageable. Stories she had encountered through novels and local gossip had given her a rough sense of clandestine methods, while offering little understanding of the risks. The law made the situation more dangerous: the legal provisions she reproduces threatened fines and imprisonment not only for those performing abortions but also for women who had them and people who encouraged abortion or contraception. Her experience was therefore shaped by secrecy as well as by the lack of safe, accessible care.

As Christmas approached, LB came to Duchesne’s accommodation after Jean T had told her that Duchesne needed help. LB gave her the address of Madame P-R, a middle-aged paramedic working at a clinic, in Passage Cardinet in Paris’s 17th arrondissement. LB described a procedure using a probe and warned that she herself had contracted septicemia afterward. Duchesne already had a prescription for penicillin. The service would cost four hundred francs, and LB offered to lend the money. In retrospect, Duchesne identifies LB as the first of several women whose practical knowledge and support helped her through the ordeal, while withholding her identity to protect her privacy.

On January 8, Duchesne went to Paris to arrange the date and fee. To avoid buying a train ticket, she hitchhiked in sleet, then took the Métro to the 17th arrondissement. She found Passage Cardinet, rather than the Impasse Cardinet she had expected, and went to Madame P-R’s apartment in an old, run-down building. Madame P-R asked about the date of her last period, assessed her condition, and arranged for Duchesne to return the following week, when she could bring home a vaginal speculum from the clinic. She confirmed the price and explained that she would use a probe without the additional substances Duchesne had heard about.

The exchange was strikingly practical. Madame P-R did not address Duchesne familiarly or question her decision; she focused on timing, technique, and payment. Duchesne later considered that this restraint may have helped prevent hesitation. She also understood the fee as payment for expertise and risk that could not be openly acknowledged. After the visit, she began taking penicillin, but her fear intensified. She concealed the reason for her anxiety from other students by saying she was having a minor operation to remove a beauty spot.

The procedure and its delay

On January 15, Duchesne returned to Paris. While waiting near Passage Cardinet, she spent time in a church and a café, watching the clock before going to the apartment. Madame P-R had prepared a table beside the bed and heated water for the instruments. During the procedure, she continued to explain that she was using the probe on its own and told Duchesne about a woman who had died after an incompetent abortionist used bleach. The warning was meant to reassure her about Madame P-R’s method, though Duchesne later wished she had not heard it.

After inserting the probe, Madame P-R told Duchesne not to touch it and said the process should resolve within a few days. She placed cotton between her thighs and walked with her to Pont-Cardinet station, concerned about the journey home. Duchesne wanted to be alone but accepted the escort. The walk through Passage Cardinet became, in memory, an estranging scene: she felt abandoned by everyone except the older woman beside her, whose help could feel both protective and unsettling.

The expected contractions did not begin. On January 17, Duchesne called Madame P-R from a post office near the station. The next morning she returned to Paris. This time, she saw a different probe being prepared in a basin. Madame P-R replaced the first probe with it and told Duchesne that she was in labor. She did not charge extra, asking only that the difficult-to-find instrument be returned afterward. The second visit changed the procedure from an attempt whose outcome remained uncertain into the start of the miscarriage.

Emergency and hospital treatment

For several days Duchesne continued with the probe in place. On January 20, she visited her parents, worried that she might not be able to travel the following weekend. She noticed that her clothing was wet with blood and fluid, but returned to Rouen by train. That evening she went with O to a film-club screening of Battleship Potemkin. As her pain grew, she lost track of the film and returned to her dormitory. O sat with her and tried to help her manage the contractions, but neither knew what would happen next.

Later that night, Duchesne miscarried in the dormitory bathroom. She called O, and together they returned to Duchesne’s room. They did not know how to handle the umbilical cord; O fetched scissors and cut it. They then wrapped the foetus in an empty melba-toast packet and flushed it away. Duchesne describes O, despite her bourgeois ideals and beliefs, as the person who stayed beside her and acted as an improvised midwife. Their shared actions and silent distress stand in sharp contrast to the isolation that had marked the clandestine arrangements.

Duchesne began losing blood and at first believed the process was over. When she became too weak to stand, she told O she needed a doctor. The doctor on night duty questioned her about what she had done, demanded a promise that she would not do it again, and sent her to Hôtel-Dieu Hospital. He also charged for the consultation, taking the fee from her desk drawer because she could not get up. The transition from clandestine care to hospital care brought exposure and judgment rather than uncomplicated relief.

At the hospital, Duchesne waited on a bed in a corridor before being taken to the operating room. A surgeon responded crudely when she asked what he intended to do. After she woke, a woman told her that the operation had been a curettage and reassured her that her ovaries had not been removed. Duchesne understood that the hospital had treated the consequences of the abortion, but the experience left her feeling that her body had been exposed to institutional authority. She also noticed the dismissive treatment of an unmarried pregnant woman who arrived at the hospital: in her view, women who had abortions and women who continued pregnancies outside marriage faced a shared class stigma.

Retrospective meaning

Years later, Duchesne returned to the event through diaries, remembered images, and the effort to establish dates. She treats the abortion as an experience of time unfolding through the body, rather than as a past incident made harmless by later changes in the law. Her account argues that the end of criminal prohibition does not, by itself, dissolve the secrecy surrounding what women endured. By recounting the event, she addresses both the danger of clandestine abortion and the continuing silence that can follow legal reform.

The episode also becomes part of the writing that follows it. Duchesne recalls wanting to put the first twenty years of her life into a room and a Sunday associated with the aftermath, and later describes the event as necessary to her understanding of whether she might want children. She says she has relinquished the guilt of having experienced the abortion and done nothing about it at the time. Her concluding purpose is to make her body, sensations, and thoughts into writing, so that a private experience can become intelligible to others. The narrative thus turns a decision made in secrecy into a public record of bodily autonomy, unequal care, and the human cost of prohibition.