Emma Bonino, leader of abortion and divorce battles that changed Italy, dies aged 78

Emma Bonino, who rose to political prominence as a leader of campaigns by the Radical Party that legalised abortion and divorce in the 1970s in heavily Roman Catholic Italy, against the objections of the Vatican, has died. She was 78.

“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,” the party said.

Even after the Radicals' political star faded, Bonino remained a key political figure and human rights campaigner active in Italy for over five decades. She served as a European commissioner for then premier Silvio Berlusconi and was a co-founder of the death penalty watchdog Hands Off Cain. But her bid in 1999 to become Italy's first female President failed.