Emma Bonino, Feminist Trailblazer and EU Commissioner, Dies at 78

Emma Bonino, the Italian feminist activist and later politician, has died aged 78, according to an obituary published by the Guardian. She joined the Radical party and fought a long battle for women's rights, the paper recorded.

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, a detail the obituary uses to frame a career built around reproductive rights and civil liberties in a country where those questions were then heavily contested.

Italy's political world turned out on Tuesday for her state funeral, The Local Italy reported. She had served as a government minister and as a European commissioner, a career that took her from Italian domestic politics to the institutions of the European Union.