Emma Bonino, 78, Dies; the Guardian Traces a Life of Italian Feminism

Emma Bonino, the Italian politician, feminist and activist, has died at the age of 78, according to an obituary published by the Guardian. The paper records that in 1974, having been told by a doctor that she was sterile, she became pregnant and attempted to obtain an abortion — a personal episode the Guardian presents as the beginning of a long public battle for women's rights.

The Guardian traces her career through the Radical party, which she joined, and describes decades of campaigning on issues that placed her at odds with much of the Italian political establishment. The Local Italy reported that Italy's political world turned out on Tuesday for her state funeral, describing her as a former government minister, European commissioner and feminist fighter.

The two accounts differ in register rather than fact: the Guardian's is a full obituary of a life in activism, the Local's a report of the institutional farewell. Between them they establish the outline the foreign press has settled on — a woman who moved from protest movements into government and the European institutions without abandoning the causes that brought her there.