‘Profoundly Wrong’: Italian PM Stops G7 from Promoting Abortion, LGBT Agenda

A conservative leader prevented the world’s largest economies from using their clout to promote abortion, and perhaps also the LGBTQIA+ agenda, saying it is “profoundly wrong” to promote anti-family ideologies for political reasons.

At last week’s Group of Seven (G7) summit, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni successfully overcame pressure from President Joe Biden to include a promise for the nations to promote abortion-on-demand as part of “sexual and reproductive health.”

“I believe it is profoundly wrong, in difficult times like these, to campaign using a precious forum like the G7,” objected Meloni on Thursday evening.

Last year’s statement from the G7 summit — held in Hiroshima, Japan — stated: “We reaffirm our full commitment to achieving comprehensive SRHR [Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights] for all, including by addressing access to safe and legal abortion and post abortion care.” Thanks to Meloni’s objections, this year’s statement includes no reference to abortion whatever, although it does “reiterate our 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 deletion came over the U.S. president’s objections. “When told of Ms. Meloni’s position, American officials say, President Biden pushed back, wanting an explicit reference to reproductive rights and at least a reaffirmation of support for abortion rights from last year’s communiqué,” reported The New York Times.

Since the G7 adopts statements by the consensus of all leaders, Meloni’s stand kept abortion out of this year’s document.

Experts say the controversy reveals Western secular leaders’ myopic focus on promoting social issues. “The very fact of tension over whether abortion was to be included in the G7 statement gives you a sense of the priorities of those Western nations pushing for it to be included,” Travis Weber, vice president for Policy and Government Affairs at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “The G7 is supposed to be looking out for the good of the international order, not jamming social policy through international agreements to be imposed on unwilling nations with quasi-religious fervor. It’s a sign of the times that the West is now known for this, to our increasing shame.”

Bloomberg News also reported that Meloni removed a reference to “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” from the final statement desired by the U.S.

Although no international treaty protects either concept, global bureaucrats have made a concerted effort to include abortion and transgender ideology as part of “sexual and reproductive health.” 

Meloni’s office downplayed both controversies. “I sincerely believe that the controversy [around abortion] was totally contrived, and, in fact, it is a controversy that did not exist in the summit, that did not exist in our discussions, precisely because there was nothing to argue about,” said Meloni.

Words and concepts from previous statements “usually … taken for granted are not repeated,” said Meloni.

Her office also denied the “news published by Bloomberg, according to which any reference to the rights of LGBT people could be removed from the final G7 communiqué,” calling it “devoid of any foundation.”

Yet the issue bled into the public as French President Emmanuel Macron complained openly of the abortion removal. “France has a vision of equality between women and men, but it’s not a vision shared by all the political spectrum,” he told the media.

This is the second year LGBT issues became a flashpoint at the G7 Summit. Last year, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke out at the meeting and told the media he was “concerned about some of the positioning that Italy is taking in terms of LGBT” ideology. Italy requires birth certificates to record a child’s biological parents. Meloni called his comments a “bit rash.”

Macron and Meloni also clashed over his premature announcement of a $50 billion “loan” to Ukraine.

The G7 statement also calls for “an immediate ceasefire in Gaza” that “leads to a two-State solution,” helping nations “achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” and asks leaders to “seize the opportunities” that “migration” presents.

Meloni has earned a global reputation as a pro-family leader. The prime minister promised not to repeal Law 194, the 1978 statute that legalized abortion in Italy, but also vowed to give women “the right to not have an abortion.” In April, Italian parliament passed an amendment Meloni’s party attached to a critical relief bill that allows trained pro-life advocates “with a qualified experience supporting motherhood” to counsel abortion-minded women inside Italian abortion facilities.

“I believe that to make a free choice, you need to have all the necessary information,” said Meloni, Italy’s first female prime minister.

Meloni has made good on her 2022 campaign pledge to “give the right to make a different decision to women who think abortion is the only solution.”

Meloni also aims to boost Italy’s sagging birthrate to at least 500,000 babies a year. (Italy current has less than 400,000 live births annually, and its birthrate of 1.25 ranks among the lowest in the world.) She established a Ministry for Family and Birth to help Italians “rediscover the beauty of parenting.” She also passed legislation banning pornography from cell phones that belong to minors.

Meloni has denounced surrogacy, known widely as utero in affitto (“womb for rent”), as an “inhuman” act and introduced legislation to bar Italians from contracting surrogates overseas. “No one can convince me that it is an act of freedom to rent one’s womb,” she has said.

She rejects gender ideology, as well. “Being a man or a woman is rooted in who we are, and can’t be changed,” Meloni told an interviewer last March.

Meloni is riding high in Italy as her party, the Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia), gained six additional seats in the elections for European Parliament earlier this month and largely displaced Matteo Salvini’s Lega as the dominant party on the Italian Right.

Meloni’s most widely-viewed moment of the summit came when she guided President Joe Biden back after he wandered off from the group of world leaders.

Members of the G7 include the United States, Canada, the U.K., Germany, Italy, France, and Japan. 

The Parliamentary Network for Critical Issues did not respond to The Washington Stand’s request for comment.