Simone Veil

Simone Veil was a French magistrate and politician, born Simone Jacob in Nice in 1927, who survived deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen as a teenager. After a law degree and several years practising law she passed the national examination to become a magistrate in 1954 and entered the penitentiary administration of the Ministry of Justice, where she worked to improve conditions for incarcerated women. As minister of health she is best remembered for the 1975 law legalising abortion, known as the Veil Act. In 1979 she became the first woman elected President of the European Parliament, and from 1998 to 2007 she served on France's Constitutional Council, the country's highest legal authority. She also presided over the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, was elected to the Académie Française in 2008 and was interred at the Panthéon in 2018.