“And if you had let him live?”, Parisian Vélib’ subscribers were surprised to discover an anti-abortion sticker on many bicycles Thursday morning, a wild display immediately denounced by Parisian elected officials and the government. Colours, font, design… on this sticker, the graphic charter of the Vélib’ seems totally compliant. And under the question asked, a fetus grows, becomes a baby and then a child capable of pedaling.
“You who take this Velib’, don’t you remember all those times when, like a child learning to ride a bike, you dared to take on the adventure?”, explains the collective Les Survivants on its website, which claims the operation in a press release posted on Wednesday. Presenting themselves as “young people revolted by the suffering and injustice caused by abortion”, Les Survivors claim to act on behalf of the “220,000 children killed each year in France”. The Survivors are “badly named”, reacted on Twitter the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, denouncing a “shame for our Republic, for Paris and its values”.
“This degradation is de facto an attack on women’s freedom,” added his health assistant, Anne Souyris, to AFP. “Under no circumstances has this poster campaign on the mudguards been authorized”, reacted the union which oversees Vélib’, the SAVM, considering a legal response and encouraging users “to remove the stickers”. “A significant number” of Vélib’ have been identified in this way, mobility assistant David Belliard told AFP.
Several members of the government also reacted on social networks, the Minister responsible for Equality between women and men, Isabelle Rome, denouncing an “unacceptable” anti-abortion “campaign”. “Faced with the reactionaries, the government and the majority will always be at the side of women to guarantee the freedom of choice,” declared the Minister of Health, François Braun. At the beginning of March, President Emmanuel Macron announced his desire to include in the Constitution the “freedom” to have recourse to abortion as part of a bill on a vast reform of institutions.