French author Annie Ernaux has staunchly defended a woman’s right to abortion after winning this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature. Ernaux said she would “fight to my last breath so that women can choose to be a mother, or not to be.”

The Swedish Academy said Ernaux, 82, was recognized for “the courage and clinical acuity” of her writing.

She is one of France’s most-honored authors and a prominent feminist voice. Ernaux’s more than 20 books present uncompromising portraits of sexual encounters, abortion, illness and the deaths of her parents.

The Nobel literature chairman said “she writes about things that no one else writes about.”

(The Associated Press)