lit a candle 11 Sept 2026I read about her fight for abortion rights in Italy in the 70s and never forgot it. That took real courage. She changed her whole country.
Their story
Emma Bonino (9 March 1948 - 11 September 2026) was an Italian politician and civil-rights activist whose five-decade career stretched from clandestine abortion activism in 1970s Italy to the European Commission, the Italian Foreign Ministry, and the pro-European party More Europe. Born in Bra, Piedmont, the second child of Filippo…
Emma Bonino (9 March 1948 - 11 September 2026) was an Italian politician and civil-rights activist whose five-decade career stretched from clandestine abortion activism in 1970s Italy to the European Commission, the Italian Foreign Ministry, and the pro-European party More Europe. Born in Bra, Piedmont, the second child of Filippo Bonino and Catterina Barge, she spent early childhood on a family farm with elder sister Domenica and younger brother Giovanni before the family moved into town in 1954 when her father entered the timber trade. After classical liceo studies she moved to Milan, graduating in modern languages and literature from Bocconi University in 1972 with a thesis on Malcolm X's autobiography.
Her public life began with a personal act of defiance. In 1974, when abortion was illegal in Italy, she obtained a clandestine abortion in Florence and later said the night train home sealed a vow that no one else should face that humiliation. In 1975 she co-founded the Information Centre on Sterilisation and Abortion (CISA), surrendered to police for procured abortion to force a public reckoning, and helped drive the campaign that legalised abortion in 1978. The same radical milieu, led with Marco Pannella's Radical Party, pushed divorce, secularism, drug-law reform, and non-violent civil disobedience. She was first elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1976 and returned repeatedly as deputy and later senator; she also won seats in the European Parliament from 1979 onward.
Internationally she became one of Italy's best-known women politicians. Appointed European Commissioner (1995-1999) with portfolios covering consumer policy, fisheries, and the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO), she was a visible presence in the mid-1990s "Turbot War," Balkan humanitarian crises, and food-safety debates, and resigned with the Santer Commission in 1999 amid the wider fraud inquiry centered on Edith Cresson. She championed abolition of the death penalty, helped found No Peace Without Justice and Hands Off Cain (Nessuno tocchi Caino), campaigned against female genital mutilation and for Afghan women's rights (Un fiore per le donne di Kabul), and was briefly detained by the Taliban in 1997 after her party photographed a women's hospital. She learned Arabic while living in Cairo in the early 2000s and convened regional democracy and International Criminal Court discussions.
In Italian government she served as minister for international trade and European affairs under Romano Prodi (2006-2008), was elected vice-president of the Senate, and became foreign minister under Enrico Letta (2013-2014), working with counterparts including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. In 2017 she launched More Europe (+Europa), adopting the slogan "Love Me Less, Vote Me More" when personal popularity outran her list's electoral thresholds. She won a Rome Senate seat in 2018 and remained a federalist voice for a United States of Europe into her seventies, including as an ALDE / Renew Europe reference figure.
Never married and without biological children by choice, she fostered two girls, Aurora and Rugiada, in the 1970s (affido, not adoption); they later returned to their birth families, and she kept a lasting bond with Rugiada. She was godmother to Countess Luana of Orange-Nassau. After announcing lung cancer in January 2015 and later remission, she kept smoking and kept campaigning; in 2023 on Rai's Belve she said she was healed. Pope Francis visited her Rome terrace in November 2024 after a respiratory hospitalisation. She died in Rome on 11 September 2026, aged 78, after a fresh respiratory crisis and transfer from Santo Spirito ICU to a private clinic. Piu Europa called her life "a long struggle against everything that denies freedom." She is survived by siblings Domenica and Giovanni and their children.
This memorial is for Emma Bonino (1948-2026), the Italian Radical politician, European Commissioner, foreign minister, and More Europe founder. It is not for Gloria Steinem (U.S. feminist, also died September 2026), and not for other people surnamed Bonino.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia Emma Bonino EN/IT CC BY-SA 4.0; Reuters/Guardian/Euronews/ANSA/POLITICO 2026-09-11; Sky TG24; emmabonino.it.
In their own words
“Coming back by train at night, I decided that never, never, never again should anyone have to suffer this humiliation.”
On her 1974 clandestine abortion and the vow that launched her activism (Reuters obituary, 2026-09-11).
“I have been fighting for rights all my life, warning people to defend them, because they don't last forever.”
Rai interview, 2024, cited by Reuters.
“Europe is not the problem, it's the solution.”
Widely attributed campaign line in her European-federalist context.
“Europe is a dream of a few, it will become a need of many and eventually a necessity of all... without a more united Europe we are dead.”
Quoted on Renew Europe / ALDE candidate page.
“I do not want and I do not think that we women are a category... If we think we are a category to be protected, I think we will lose our fight.”
To Reuters, 1996, rejecting narrow feminist-category framing while fighting women's rights (Reuters obituary).
“I didn't have them out of choice... You need a lot of courage (to have children). With a child you need to say 'for ever'. I never managed that.”
Io Donna magazine, 2018, on not having biological children (via Reuters).
“Her life was a long struggle against everything that denies freedom: against clandestine abortion, world hunger, the stranglehold of party politics, female genital mutilation, punitive justice, genocide, and every form of authoritarianism.”
More Europe / +Europa farewell statement via Guardian and Independent, 2026-09-11.
Photos
2Emma Bonino, European Parliament portrait, 2006
Jun 2006 · by People Forever
Emma Bonino, 2017
Jan 2017 · by People Forever
That's beautiful. She really wasn't.