Italy Buries Emma Bonino, and the Foreign Press Writes the Ledger of Her Battles

Italy's political world turned out on Tuesday for the state funeral of Emma Bonino, a former government minister, European commissioner and feminist campaigner, according to The Local Italy. She was 78. The Guardian published an obituary the same day, describing her as an Italian politician, feminist and activist who joined the Radical party and fought a long battle for women's rights.

The Guardian's account opens in 1974, when Bonino became pregnant after a doctor had told her she was sterile. She attempted to get an abortion, the obituary records, and the episode became part of a public life organised around questions the Italian state was slow to answer: contraception, abortion, divorce, and the legal status of women within them.

Her career carried her from the Radical party into government and then to Brussels as Italy's European commissioner. The Local Italy's funeral report and the Guardian obituary together describe a figure whose institutional roles were always attached to a campaign, rather than the other way round.