You're listening to the BBC World Service, and now witness history with me, Reena Stanton-Shammer.

Today I'm taking you back to Italy in 1978, when campaigners won their long fight to legalise abortion.

It would involve going on hunger strike and being jailed.

You can hear women calling for free abortions.

Slogans like these could be heard at marches around the country in the 1970s.

To understand how Italy got to this point, we're heading back to 1974.

A few years after divorce had been made legal, the mood in Italy was changing.

I don't remember any kind of fear, but I do remember a sort of heavy humiliation.

The private experience has been so tough, so humiliating, that it seems to me totally normal to do something about it.

I never thought of politics before.

That's Emma Bonina, who was so passionate about legalising abortion, that it led her to becoming a politician.

Finding herself pregnant at 26, she had a termination, which meant she was breaking the law, which carried a jail sentence, of up to five years.

Soon after her ordeal in 1974, Emma met Adela Fattia, a member of the radical party.

She joined them in helping women access abortions.

What we were doing is trying to push legislation on legalising abortion.

We did the never, of course, the illusion of solving the problem.

It was a crime and it was done in a clandestine way.

Some people were saying that at least one to two million women were undergoing an abortion.

Emma would travel with women from Milan to Florence, where they'd have abortions.

And those who could afford it would fly to London or France to have the procedure carried out legally.

The demand was so high that flights would be booked for women from cities all over Italy.

Every weekend British Airways flight 353 leaves Rome for London.

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