Emma Bonino, who died Friday at seventy-eight, was among that rare kind of person whose life becomes inseparable from a cause larger than themselves. In 1970s Italy, when the law and the Church stood as one against women's reproductive autonomy, she stepped forward not as a symbol but as an organizer, a disruptor, and ultimately an architect of change — helping bring about the 1978 law that legalized abortion. Her death does not close the question she devoted her life to; it only reminds us how much such questions depend on those willing to carry them.