[Chapter 2. The embryo in abortion legislation].

For a long time, the legal condition of the child conceived, the embryo or the human fœtus, to use the language of biomedicine, was dominated by two main principles : one, having its roots in Roman law, made it possible to count it, by anticipation, among beings with a legal existence, so as to grant it its rights, as if it was already born (the infans conceptus maxim) : the other, protecting its life in utero, and so its chances of being born, by the penal incrimination of abortion. The legalisation of abortion by the ?Veil? law of 17 January 1975 upset this traditional approach of the law. The subsequent evolution of the legislation has accentuated the phenomenon. The promotion of the freedom of women to obtain an abortion has been accompanied by a correlated decline in the protection of the embryo. At the same time, abortion resting on medical techniques has become a means, precious for research, to obtain embryo or foetal cells or tissues. Eliminated on the one hand, the embryo has finally become on the other hand the object of medical and scientific stakes.