Gisele Halimi, a Tunisian-born feminist MP and lawyer who fought to decriminalise abortion in France and spent her life trailblazing for women’s and other human rights, has died aged 93. She sought justice for torture victims in Tunisia and Algeria, under French control when she started practising law, strengthened French laws against rape and campaigned for the end of the death penalty.
When she was born on 27 July 1927 4.30pm La Goulette, Tunisia, into a poor, conservative Jewish family, her father was so disappointed she was a girl he wouldn’t admit to her birth for several weeks. That sowed the seeds of her rebellion and lifelong drive for equality and fair treatment for women. She refused a teenage arranged marriage and left home to study law in Paris.
She had an intense 8th house Leo Sun in an inspired and attention-demanding Fire Grand Trine to an adventurous Jupiter Uranus in Aries trine Saturn in Sagittarius. That was formed into an even more talented Kite by Jupiter Uranus opposition her Libra Midheaven, making her MC the leading point of her chart. She threw her all into her career. She also had an emotionally intense Pluto, Moon, Mercury in Cancer in her 8th, hinting at her obsessive concern for women’s rights.
Her communicative and legal affairs 9th house had an idealistic Neptune along with a dynamic Mars (in a disciplined square to Saturn) and persuasive Venus, that along with her Libra Midheaven and Saturn in Sagittarius – all pointed to the law as a consuming interest.
Her superstar 22nd Harmonic was strong as was her get-it-together 5th and her seeking-soul 7H. Also notable were her obsessional-dream 11th and breakthrough-unorthodox 13H.
Wow. Thank you. Now I have to go find out more about her. We need these stories.
Thank you for looking at her chart. On the trial which challenged the abortion laws in France she commented “I chose to make it a political trial, and to appeal, over the head of the magistrate to public opinion and the country.” Which felt like a nice Jupiter Uranus statement. Charlie Hebdo at the time dubbed the 343 signatories of the manifesto who admitted to having had abortions (including well known people) the ‘343 sluts’. She also wrote in a memoir ‘everything I am, everything I have ever done, is perhaps, due to the fact that my mother did not love me.’ Interesting comment with the Moon Pluto conjunction in her chart.