General mobilization in front of the Saint-Louis clinic in Ganges, in Hérault, Friday, on the occasion of Women’s Rights Day. If the inter-union calls for demonstrations for equality and the increase in wages, the future of the Ganges maternity hospital will also be at the heart of the demands. For the collective which is fighting to maintain it, the right to abortion is disappearing from the territories with the closure of local maternity wards.
All united in the strike and the maintenance of a maternity hospital in Ganges: the CGT Ganges and Le Vigan unions, Solidaires Sud Cevennes, the FSU, the Peasant Confederation, the PCF, LFI, the Assembly of precarious workers, Génération écologie and the collective Maternity to Defend are calling for demonstrations on Friday March 8, 2024 at 11:30 a.m., in front of the Saint-Louis clinic in Ganges, in Hérault, where people have not been able to give birth for a year.
Equal pay and careers between men and women and the revaluation of predominantly female professions will be among the key demands on this women’s rights day, rights that are increasingly being undermined in the Hérault hinterland, according to Maternity collective to defend.
This collective has been asking the ARS for months to put in place the human and financial resources necessary for all gynecological care in a local maternity hospital, including abortions.
“When the maternity ward closed a year ago, there was no anticipation on the part of Cap Santé (Regional Private Group of Local Care Establishments). Their official speech was to say that gynecologists do not want to come and work in Ganges. In fact, it is much more complicated: it is part of a global plan by the State to close small local maternity wards in France, because of a war between the public and the private sector.“, affirms Héloïse Pendino, spokesperson for the collective.
The creation of’a new private clinic in 2025 to replace the Ganges maternity hospital in Hérault was announced by the ARS. The State must contribute 11 million euros to its implementation. “The future private clinic will be financed to the tune of a third by public money and we still do not know whether or not there will be a real maternity service inside. We are all waiting, and the women of the territory are very worried: there have been at least four to six births on the road since the Ganges road closed.
As for theinclusion in the fundamental law of “the freedom guaranteed to women to have recourse to a voluntary termination of pregnancy”, adopted by thehe deputies and senators, Monday in Versailles, this should not change much for the inhabitants who live in the north of the department of Hérault and in its neighbor Gard.
Abortion enshrined in the constitution is progressing in spirit, but in reality it is going backwards!
Héloïse Pendino, spokesperson for the Maternity to Defend collective
“If there is no maternity ward, there is no abortion possible: the young people of the canton do not have access to it, they are under the control of their parents, of their families because they have to go now in Montpellier to have an abortion and the risk of unwanted pregnancies is increasing. Macron has fooled us: he described abortion as a freedom and not as a right. As a result, there is no obligation”concludes Héloïse Pendino.