Emma Bonino, Italian politician who fought for abortion access, dies aged 78

ROME, Sept 11 - Emma Bonino's life in politics began with a crime. In 1974, at a time when abortion was illegal in Italy, she travelled to a clandestine clinic in Florence to terminate an unplanned pregnancy.

"Coming back by train at night, I decided that never, never, never again should anyone have to suffer this humiliation," she later recalled. A year later, determined to drag abortion out of the shadows, she handed herself in to the police, turning her private "offence" into a public act of defiance.

The arrest made headlines, fueling a campaign that eventually led to the legalisation of abortion in 1978. It also launched Bonino into parliament with the Radical Party, a small but relentless force for civil rights.

Direct and diminutive, Bonino was a passionate advocate for social justice and gender equality who deliberately courted controversy to advance her many causes at home and abroad.

"I have been fighting for rights all my life, warning people to defend them, because they don't last forever," she told state broadcaster Rai in 2024.

In a dynamic career spanning five decades, Bonino won repeated election to both the Italian and European parliaments and served as a foreign minister and European affairs minister in Rome. She was also a high-profile European Commissioner in Brussels.

She remained in frontline politics well into her 70s, overcoming lung cancer despite refusing to give up smoking.

Underscoring her high standing in Italy, and belying Roman Catholic disapproval of her stance on abortion, the then Pope Francis made an unusual trip outside the Vatican in November 2024 to visit her in her home after an acute health scare.

She died on Friday aged 78, her spokesperson said.

On Monday, Bonino was hospitalized in a serious condition, but was taken out of intensive care on Thursday and transferred to a private clinic.

BRINGING COLOUR TO A GREY BRUSSELS

Founded by Bonino's mentor, Marco Pannella, the Radical Party helped redraw Italian society, promoting an array of causes through acts of civil disobedience, hunger strikes and dozens of referendums.

Some battles they won, such as banning nuclear power. In other campaigns, including a push to legalise cannabis, they fell short.

To widespread surprise, Bonino was appointed to the European Commission in 1994, thanks to the backing of the then Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. There she took charge of a disparate group of dossiers that no-one else had claimed - fisheries, consumer policy and the European Community's humanitarian office.

She was the first woman ever to wear trousers at a meeting of the male-dominated Commission, and proved herself to be one of the most colourful politicians in an often grey Brussels.

Accomplished and confident before the television cameras, she quickly drew media interest by riding Spanish fishing boats on the high seas during the EU's "fish war" with Canada. Not one to mince her words, she accused Canada of piracy, which that country's government denied.

'I DO NOT THINK WOMEN ARE A CATEGORY'

In 1997 she was briefly detained by Taliban militia during a visit to Afghanistan after people in her party took pictures in a women's hospital - an offence under Taliban regulations.

She condemned the international community's silence over the fate of Afghan women under the Taliban but told Reuters in 1996 that she did not see herself as a traditional feminist.

"I do not want and I do not think that we women are a category," she said. "If we think we are a category to be protected, I think we will lose our fight."

After her stint in Brussels, she pursued a broad mix of causes, including the campaign against female genital mutilation, pension equality in Italy and migrant rights.

She also promoted closer integration across the European Union, founding the +Europa (More Europe) party in 2017.

While she herself regularly scored well in popularity polls, her new party fared poorly at the ballot box, failing to win any seats at the 2019 and 2024 European parliamentary elections, while picking up just two seats at the 2022 national polls.

Bonino, who was born in northwest Italy in 1948, never married and did not have children.

"I didn't have them out of choice," she told Io Donna magazine in a 2018 interview. "You need a lot of courage (to have children). With a child you need to say 'for ever'. I never managed that."

For more obituaries, click here. REUTERS