Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, host of the G7 summit, on Saturday denied there had been a row over the exclusion of the word abortion from a leaders’ statement.The controversy has been constructed in a totally contrived manner, the polemic did not exist in the summit… because there was nothing to quarrel about,” she insisted at an end-of-summit press conference.
Leaders of the Group of Seven rich democracies last year committed to addressing “access to safe and legal abortion”, in a statement after a summit in Hiroshima in Japan.
But that reference did not appear in the final statement agreed at this year’s summit in Italy’s Puglia — with diplomats blaming Meloni.Sources in Meloni’s office denied that the reference had been removed, saying on Thursday that the declaration was still being negotiated and that “everything that will be included in the final document will be final points resulting from the negotiations”.
Macron told reporters on the sidelines of the event that he “regretted” the removal of the reference.
“You don’t have the same sensibilities in your country,” Macron said to an Italian journalist. “France has a vision of equality between women and men, but it’s not a vision shared by all the political spectrum.”
