ROME — Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni successfully resisted attempts by French President Emmanuel Macron and other leaders at this week’s G7 summit to declare abortion a “right.”
French and Canadian diplomats proposed more explicit language on abortion rights for the 2024 joint statement, which drew support from other leaders — notably U.S. President Joe Biden — but the measure was shot down by Meloni.
“All the other countries backed them, but it was a red line for Meloni, so it is absent from the final text,” one diplomat reportedly said.
Macron has pushed hard for abortion rights, resulting in France becoming the first country in the world last March to explicitly include the right to abortion in its Constitution.
The French president’s political stock is plummeting, however, while Ms. Meloni’s is soaring following last Sunday’s European Parliament elections.
Conservative Rassemblement National (RN) leader Marine Le Pen got twice as many votes as Macron’s governing coalition, prompting Macron to scramble to dissolve the French national Parliament and call snap elections in an effort to regain authority for the remainder of his presidential term.
On the contrary, Meloni’s conservative party, Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), was Sunday’s big winner, taking a strong 28 percent of the votes — more than any single European party — solidifying her domestic leadership as well as her role as kingmaker in Europe.
Italy’s first female prime minister, Meloni, therefore, arrived to the G7 summit as the most politically stable leader among the seven and proved herself unwilling to be cowed into submission by Macron.
Following the decision to eliminate the word “abortion” from the G7 text, Macron said he was “disappointed” by the reversal, whereas Meloni snapped back that “an international summit is no place for election campaigning.”
For its part, the White House made it known that U.S. President Joe Biden “will not give in on the issue of rights and will discuss the issue with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni,” National Security adviser Jake Sullivan said.
According to Italian media, however, in recent months, Meloni has begun a “secret rapprochement” with Republican candidate Donald Trump, with whom she shares a pro-life stance.
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