"I thought there had to be something I could do because it seemed crazy that, in addition to the psychological tragedy each woman has to face, came also all the rest"
About this Quote
Bonino’s line is the sound of moral impatience hardening into policy. She isn’t describing abstract suffering; she’s naming a double punishment: first, the “psychological tragedy” a woman endures, and then “all the rest” - the social, legal, and medical gauntlet piled on top of it. The phrasing matters. “I thought there had to be something I could do” is a private reckoning, not a slogan. It casts political action as an almost reluctant necessity, triggered by the sheer irrationality of the system: “it seemed crazy.” That word is doing quiet work, translating outrage into common sense. You don’t need to share Bonino’s ideology to feel the indictment: if a situation is “crazy,” the status quo has already lost the argument.
The subtext is about institutional cruelty masquerading as morality. “All the rest” compresses a whole ecosystem of penalties - stigma, bureaucratic obstruction, unsafe conditions, enforced secrecy, the threat of prosecution - into a weary afterthought. It implies the speaker has seen how power operates: not only through big prohibitions, but through friction, delay, and humiliation.
Contextually, Bonino’s political identity is inseparable from Italy’s late-20th-century battles over reproductive rights and secular governance, where the state and church-adjacent norms often converged. The quote frames reform less as liberation rhetoric than as harm reduction: if tragedy is inevitable in some cases, adding punishment is not virtue. It’s governance failing its most basic test: minimizing needless suffering.
The subtext is about institutional cruelty masquerading as morality. “All the rest” compresses a whole ecosystem of penalties - stigma, bureaucratic obstruction, unsafe conditions, enforced secrecy, the threat of prosecution - into a weary afterthought. It implies the speaker has seen how power operates: not only through big prohibitions, but through friction, delay, and humiliation.
Contextually, Bonino’s political identity is inseparable from Italy’s late-20th-century battles over reproductive rights and secular governance, where the state and church-adjacent norms often converged. The quote frames reform less as liberation rhetoric than as harm reduction: if tragedy is inevitable in some cases, adding punishment is not virtue. It’s governance failing its most basic test: minimizing needless suffering.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
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