Meloni and Macron clash on abortion language at
G7 summit
Nic
Robertson
By
Christian Edwards, Niamh Kennedy, Barbie Latza Nadeau and Nic Robertson, CNN
Updated
4:17 PM EDT, Fri June 14, 2024
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/14/europe/meloni-macron-italy-france-abortion-g7-intl/index.html
The
crowning document from a meeting of G7 leaders in Italy has been released with
a veiled reference to abortion after French President Emmanuel Macron clashed
with Italy’s prime minister over the specific language to include on abortion
rights.
The Group
of Seven’s summit declaration on Friday referred to “comprehensive sexual and
reproductive health and rights for all” but did not include the word “abortion”
itself – a contrast to the group’s previous communique, released after the 2023
summit in Hiroshima, Japan, which called explicitly for “access to safe and
legal abortion and post abortion care.”
American
officials said US President Joe Biden pushed to keep in language about
reproductive rights after the summit host, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia
Meloni, sought to strip some language from the document. Friday’s communique
appeared to be a diplomatic solution, with the statement endorsing the
Hiroshima text without reproducing it.
The
document emphasizes the seven nations’ “commitments in the Hiroshima Leaders’
Communiqué to universal access to adequate, affordable, and quality health
services for women, including comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and
rights for all,” the communique reads.
The annual
gathering’s communique sets out the bloc’s values and agenda for the year
ahead. Several previous summits’ communiques have also stopped short of using
the word “abortion,” calling instead for access to sexual and reproductive
health services.
‘I regret it, but I respect it’
Negotiations
over this year’s language caused a public clash on the sidelines of the summit
between Meloni and Macron. Asked by an Italian journalist on Thursday how he
felt about a G7 statement “without the word abortion,” Macron said he regretted
Rome’s position.
“France
shares this vision of equality between men and women. It is not a vision that
is shared by all the political spectrum. I regret it but I respect it because
it was the sovereign choice of your people,” he said.
France
intends to “defend with force” the right to abortion, he added.
Meloni
defended her conservative government’s position on Thursday, and accused Macron
of playing politics, days after he called snap parliamentary elections in
France for later this month.
“There is
no reason to argue about issues on which we have already agreed for some time.
I believe it is profoundly wrong, in difficult times like these, to campaign
using a precious forum like the G7,” Meloni told reporters Thursday.
The bloc
has used the past two summits primarily to stress its support for Ukraine as
the country tries to repel Russia’s invasion and show it remains undivided in
the face of resurgent global threats.
But, coming
swiftly after European parliamentary elections which saw far-right parties make
gains in several countries – and ahead of the United States presidential
election in November – national political issues have intruded on this summit
more than in previous years.
Biden, who
has made protecting abortion rights a centerpiece of his reelection bid, had
pushed to ensure that an endorsement of the Hiroshima statement would be in the
communique, according to US officials on Thursday.
“The
president felt very strongly that we need to have at the very least the
language that references what we did in Hiroshima on women’s health and
reproductive rights,” a senior US administration official said.
The issue
of abortion has become particularly febrile in the US since the Supreme Court
overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, a decision made possible by a solid six-member
conservative majority, including three judges nominated by former President
Donald Trump.
In Italy,
however, where Meloni’s conservative platform helped propel her party to power
in 2022, she has largely toed the G7’s line on geopolitical issues – while
pushing hard-right policies domestically. She has previously called abortion a
“tragedy,” surrogacy “inhuman” and has removed lesbian mothers’ names from
their children’s birth certificates.
Francesco
Lollobrigida, Meloni’s brother-in-law, informal spokesman and Italy’s
agriculture minister, suggested the reason Meloni feels so strongly about this
issue was because the Pope has been present at the summit.
The clash
between Meloni and Macron comes after France in March became the world’s first
country to enshrine abortion rights in its constitution, the culmination of an
effort which began in direct response to the US Supreme Court’s decision to
roll back abortion rights in America.
“France
integrated this right of women to an abortion, the freedom to have control over
one’s body within this institution. The same sensibility is not shared in your
country today,” Macron said at the summit.
CNN’s
Xiaofei Xu and Samantha Waldenberg contributed reporting.
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