Emma Bonino, 78, and the Long Argument She Started

Emma Bonino, the Italian politician, feminist and activist, has died at 78. The Guardian's obituary, published on Tuesday, follows her from the Radical party through a long campaign for women's rights, beginning with an account of a 1974 pregnancy, a doctor's assurance that she was sterile, and an attempt to obtain an abortion in a country where it was then illegal. The Local Italy reported separately that Italy's political world turned out on Tuesday for her state funeral.

The obituary is a foreign-press document, and it reads Bonino as the international press has generally read her: as a campaigner first, an officeholder second. She served as a government minister and as a European commissioner, but the Guardian's account gives more space to the fights than to the posts. That emphasis is a fair summary of how she was received abroad, where her name was less associated with a party than with a set of causes.