BORGO EGNAZIA, Italy (AP) — President Joe Biden and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had a lot to discuss Friday when they met on the sidelines of the G7 summit, but one major issue was not on the table: abortion, an issue that has emerged as an unexpected point of friction between the democracies gathered in Italy.
Meloni’s right-wing government this week sought to tone down references to abortion in the final declaration of all G7 nations at the end of the summit, sparking disagreements among states over the wording of the joint commitments in the final draft, according to two senior U.S. officials, a senior EU official and two other officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss a statement that has not yet been released.
While the word “abortion” is absent from the bill, it does note the need to promote “reproductive health and rights,” according to a copy of the text obtained by The Associated Press.
In a transcript of the meeting between Biden and Meloni, the White House did not mention the issue. Instead, it emphasized the joint effort to “deepen the US-Italy partnership on a range of important security, economic and regional issues.” It referred to Meloni’s “unwavering support for Ukraine as it continues to defend itself against Russia’s brutal war of aggression, including Italy’s indispensable security assistance.”
White House officials say the two politicians work well together despite Meloni’s views on abortion and her other conservative political views, which are more in line with those of Republicans in the United States.
The summit underscored how their relations have evolved since Meloni came to power in 2022 as the head of Italy’s first far-right government since the end of World War II. Shortly after Meloni’s victory, Biden warned of the rise of far-right populism in Europe and the United States.
Those concerns have been eased by Meloni’s sturdy support for Ukraine at a time when other far-right politicians’ engagement is waning. Meloni also announced on Thursday that Italy would join a US-led investment initiative in Africa, the Lobito railway corridor, a clear gesture of US support that came shortly after Italy withdrew from China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.
Biden initially used Meloni’s candidacy “as a warning to transatlanticists on both sides of the Atlantic,” Rachel Rizzo, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s European Center in Washington, said before the summit. “But her tenure as prime minister was actually quite forward-looking in terms of Italian support for Ukraine and NATO. So that relationship has actually moved in a pretty positive direction.”
The upcoming G7 final declaration on abortion will state that nations have reaffirmed their commitment from the 2023 summit in Japan to “support universal access to adequate, affordable and quality health services for women, including comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights for all.”
However, that 2023 text also made it clear that nations reaffirmed their “full commitment” to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights for all, “including by addressing access to safe and legal abortion and aftercare.”
The summit’s final declaration is a lengthy document covering many topics, and it often takes a struggle to get all leaders to agree on the final wording. French President Emmanuel Macron said he regretted the decision to omit the word abortion.
“This vision is not shared by the entire political spectrum,” he said. “I regret it, but I respect it because it was the sovereign decision of your people,” he told an Italian reporter on Thursday.
The US delegation expressed satisfaction with the concrete references to the 2023 summit in Japan, where the right to abortion care will be reaffirmed.
But abortion access is a major theme of Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign as Democrats seek to energize voters concerned about the deterioration of women’s medical care since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. About half of the 50 states now restrict abortion access, and the issue has expanded to include access to emergency medical care, contraception and in vitro fertilization.
Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has repeatedly campaigned on repealing federal abortion rights – he nominated three of the justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. However, he refuses to support a nationwide ban on abortion, saying he wants to leave the issue to the states.
Biden, a Catholic, has undergone a decades-long evolution on abortion rights that in some ways reflects changing attitudes within the Democratic Party. He used to oppose federal funding of abortion services, but his administration has championed access and sued states where women couldn’t get treatment. But he himself still doesn’t utter the word “abortion” often.
The consequences of Roe go beyond what the word “abortion” generally means in the United States – namely, the ability to end an unwanted pregnancy. Biden’s campaign has sought to apply these ripple effects to reach a broader voter base, including using words like “reproductive rights” in a general way.
In Italy, Meloni, who campaigned on the slogan “God, Country and Family,” has made it her mission to encourage women to have children in order to reverse Italy’s demographic crisis. Abortion has been legal since 1978, and she has stressed that she does not want to repeal the law, only to fully implement it.
But their forces recently passed a law that allows anti-abortion activists to access public health centers to counsel women considering abortion. For the political right, the amendment simply fulfills the original intent of the 1978 abortion legalization law, which included provisions to discourage the procedure and support motherhood.
For the left-wing opposition, the decision represents a curtailment of abortion rights, the effects of which its opponents had warned about after Meloni’s election in 2022.
And the G7 communiqué is another sign. The leader of the Italian Democratic Party, Elly Shlein, said in a statement on Thursday that the text was a “national disgrace” because it called into question a fundamental right of women.
Pope Francis was at the summit on Friday and Biden was scheduled to meet with him privately. At the president’s last audience with the pope in 2021, Biden said Francis told him, “I am a good Catholic and I should continue to receive communion.”
The next evening, he attended Mass and received Communion in a Roman church – proof that even in the Pope’s diocese, Biden’s stance on abortion was no obstacle to receiving the sacrament.
At the same time, Francis is a strict opponent of abortion, which he equates with “hiring a hitman to solve a problem.”
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Associated Press writer Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.
