The Law

A feature film. Born in France in the 1920s, Simone Veil studied politics at Paris prestigious Sciences Po until she and her family were deported to the extermination camps during World War II. Though she lost her parents and a brother, Veil managed to survive both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, an experience that taught her to fight and which would prepare her for her battles for women's rights in the decades ahead. After the war, she rose in the national government, becoming Chiracâ's minister of health in 1974 and the driving force behind a then controversial law to legalize abortion in France in the 1970s.