Gisèle Halimi

Gisèle Halimi (born Zeiza Gisèle Taïeb; 1927 – 2020) was a French-Tunisian lawyer, feminist, and writer. Born into a modest Jewish family in La Goulette, Tunisia, she fought against traditional patriarchy from childhood, going on a hunger strike at age ten to avoid domestic servitude.

Admitted to the Paris bar in 1949, Halimi defended Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) fighters, notably Djamila Boupacha in 1960, exposing French military torture alongside Simone de Beauvoir. In 1971, Halimi was the sole lawyer to sign the 'Manifesto of the 343' admitting to having had an abortion. That same year, she co-founded the movement *Choisir la Cause des Femmes*. In 1972, she turned the historic Bobigny Trial—defending a 16-year-old girl prosecuted for aborting after rape—into a political indictment of the law, directly paving the way for the legalization of abortion in France. In 1978, her defense in a landmark Aix-en-Provence trial led to rape being redefined as a crime under French law.