Dossier Engagement public des chercheurs. Intellectuels engagés et experts : biologistes et médecins dans la bataille de l'avortement

Experts and intellectuals: Biologists, physicians and the abortion debate in post-war France

Historien des sciences, CERMES, Site CNRS, 7 rue Guy Môquet, 94801 Villejuif cedex, France

Auteur de correspondance : gaudilli@vjf.cnrs.fr

Résumé

Entre 1965 et 1975, la libéralisation de l'avortement a fait l'objet de multiples rapports, pétitions, essais et tribunes émanant, individuellement et collectivement, de biologistes et de médecins. À partir de ces textes publics, cet article analyse la place prise par l'expertise biomédicale dans la discussion sur l'avortement et distingue quatre figures de scientifiques engagés : l'expert institutionnel, l'intellectuel caution, le professionnel engagé et une figure nouvelle, proche de "l'intellectuel spécifique" foucaldien, le technicien au service du féminisme. Cette typologie de l'engagement est analysée en fonction de deux paramètres de l'histoire scientifique de l'après-guerre : (i) les transformations des rapports entre sciences et société induites par les mobilisations sociales qui ont suivi Mai 1968 ; (ii) le développement de la biomédecine et l'érosion de l'expertise associée à la gestion par l'État des populations au profit de la gestion médicalisée des choix individuels et des risques reproductifs.

Abstract

Between 1965 and 1975 French physicians and biologists signed numerous articles, essays, and petitions in favor or against a repeal of the 1920 French abortion law. Taking this literature as a starting point, this article explores the role of biomedical expert opinion in the French abortion debate. The first section discusses the opposed stands taken by Jérôme Lejeune and Jacques Monod. Rather than looking at religious or general political commitments to explain their engagement, the article focuses on their research trajectories and their conflicting visions of genetics and its medical uses. The second section addresses the construction of expert assessment within four settings: the National Population Council, the French Family Planning Association, a gathering of physicians arguing for reform called the National Association for the Study of Abortion, and the leftist Health Information Group which publicly organized illegal abortions. On that basis, one may distinguish four types of engaged scientists, i.e. the institutional expert, the moral patron, the engaged professional, and the technician helping women activists. The latter was a new character close to what Michel Foucault once described as "specific intellectual". In conclusion, the emergence and later transformation of these forms of engagement is interpreted in terms of: a) the changing relationships between science and society triggered by the social critique of the 1970s, and b) the new forms of biomedical management of reproductive choices that supplanted expert advice linked to State management of the population.