To tell Emma Bonino’s story, it is not enough to list her positions. Minister, European commissioner, parliamentarian for decades: her true biography lies in the battles she chose to fight, almost always before they became mainstream. Abortion, divorce, civil rights, prisons, Europe. Bonino passed away this Friday at the age of 78 in Rome.
Her small figure contrasted with the firmness of her positions and a notable polemical spirit that, however, never turned into resentment. As even a political adversary like Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni acknowledged, Bonino was perhaps the most recognizable face of the fight for civil rights in Italy. “Our stories have been apart, but that has never stopped me from recognizing her importance in the life of our nation,” Meloni said.
Her name became directly linked to one of the slogans of the seventies: “the personal is political.” Bonino’s battle for civil rights was born, as she herself recounted, from a private experience. In 1974 she became pregnant despite a gynecologist having assured her she was sterile. When she decided to terminate the pregnancy, the same doctor offered to perform an illegal abortion clandestinely in Italy for a sum she could not afford. Bonino ended up turning to a doctor in Florence connected to the environment that shortly after would give rise to the great radical campaign for the legalization of abortion. That experience changed her life.
As European commissioner, she took Brussels’ humanitarian aid to some of the world’s main war zones
The following year she self-reported for having helped other women to abort and became, along with the historic leader Marco Pannella, one of the faces of the campaign for the legalization of abortion. She was arrested and imprisoned, and only in 1978 did Italy finally approve the law that legalized abortion.
The battle also led Bonino to Parliament with the Radical Party, a small but tireless force in defending civil rights and gender equality.
Read more Inflation remains high at 3.4% in the U.S. and bets rise for the Fed to raise rates
This did not prevent her, many years later, from opening a dialogue with the Catholic world. To the point that, already very weakened by illness, she received a visit at her home from Pope Francis on November 5, 2024. On the terrace of the lay leader, in the heart of Rome, just steps from Campo de’ Fiori, Francis appeared with a bouquet of roses and a box of chocolates. The image of both in wheelchairs ended up portraying an entire era. “You are an example of freedom and resistance,” the head of the Catholic Church told her.
Pope Francis visited her by surprise in 2024 and described her as “an example of freedom and resistance”
The Government has decided to grant her a State funeral, an honor reserved for the highest authorities of the Republic and personalities recognized for exceptional service to the country. And it was precisely the highest institutional office that Bonino aspired to.
In 1999, the radical leader launched herself into the race for the presidency of the Republic, a completely unusual operation in Italy, where the head of state is not directly elected by citizens but by Parliament in a particularly Byzantine procedure. The slogan was “The right person for the Quirinal.” The mobilization was enormous, but when it came down to it, only 15 of the nearly one thousand electors wrote her name on the ballot.
It was precisely Europe that perhaps gave her the greatest satisfactions. In 1995 she was appointed European commissioner. On paper, she held the portfolios of Fisheries, Consumer Policy, and Humanitarian Aid, but it was the latter that she turned into a very personal political platform. Bonino took the Commission’s presence to some of the most dramatic scenes on the planet: the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, and Afghanistan. She was in Sarajevo a few days after taking office; in Africa, she toured refugee camps and war zones; and in Kabul, she was even detained for a few hours by the Taliban in 1997. Nothing could be further from the image of a Brussels bureaucrat.
