Simone Veil, DBE (French pronunciation: [simɔn vɛj] (
listen); 13 July 1927 – 30 June 2017) was a lawyer and politician who served as Minister of Health under Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, President of the European Parliament and member of the Constitutional Council of France.
A survivor from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp who lost part of her family in the Holocaust, she served as the first president of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, from 2000 to 2007, and subsequently as honorary president. She was elected to the Académie française in November 2008. She was best known for pushing forward the law legalizing abortion in France on 17 January 1975.
