Marie-Claire Chevalier

Marie-Claire Chevalier (12 July 1955 – 23 January 2022) was a French abortion rights activist. She was defended in the by Gisèle Halimi in 1972. The victory in this trial was key for the legalization of abortion in France and the Veil Act.

Biography Chevalier was born in Meung-sur-Loire on 12 July 1955. She grew up in a working-class family alongside her mother and two sisters in . At the age of 16, she was raped by an 18-year-old male classmate who attended the same secondary school as her. She then found herself pregnant and asked her mother, Michèle Chevalier, to help her find a means of abortion.

Arrested for a case of grand theft auto unrelated to the rape, Chevalier's rapist revealed her abortion as a means to escape prosecution and obtain his release. She was defended in the Bobigny trial by Gisèle Halimi, alongside four other women. The trial was described as a "political affair" by Halimi and Simone de Beauvoir. but it was closed in 2021.

Chevalier died from brain cancer at a hospital in Orleans on 23 January 2022 at the age of 66.