Italy’s top influencer goes to war with hard-right party expected to lead the country

An Italian influencer has sparked a feud over abortion with the far-right Italian party likely to win next month’s elections.

Chiara Ferragni, an Italian model and businesswoman, is going to war with The Brothers of Italy — party polls have tipped as most likely to win in the country’s September 25 election — over access to abortion.

‘The Brothers of Italy have made it practically impossible to have an abortion in the Marche they rule. A policy that risks becoming national if the right wins the elections,” Ferragni wrote in her first public attack on the party.

She posted a link to an article by the guardwho said the council has allowed anti-abortion activists to work in family counseling clinics in central Italy’s Marche region.

While national policy allows medical abortions in Italy up to nine weeks after pregnancy, the Marche region – controlled by the Brothers of Italy – limits abortion to seven weeks.

Giorgia Meloni, who leads the party, traveled to the region on Tuesday to boost her election campaign ahead of the national vote.

Ferragni has her own shoe line and collaborates with well-known brands, ranging from Guess to Gucci.

The 30-year-old Milanese fashion blogger launched The blond salad, in 2009, for Instagram, paving the way for her career.

“Now is the time to act and make sure these things don’t happen,” Ms Ferragni wrote on social media.

Italian local media said the party — which relies on a mostly Catholic base to secure its share of the vote — restricted access to the abortion pill in health clinics when it came to power in the Marche in 2020.

The Brothers of Italy deny that the measure had a negative impact on the reproductive health of local women.

The party oversees 20 other regions of Italy, and experts point to its policies in the Marche region — which is near Florence and San Marino — as a whistleblower for how it would run the entire country.

It comes after Meloni received widespread conviction for posting a video of a Ukrainian woman being raped by an asylum seeker in an Italian city.

The video, which MailOnline does not show, played audio of the asylum seeker who assaulted a 55-year-old woman on a sidewalk in the city of Piacenza early Sunday.

Meloni, who has called for a blockade off the North African coast to stop ships carrying migrants to Italy, tweeted the video, posted to a newspaper website, with the image blurred but with the woman’s cries clearly audible.

‘A hug for this woman. I will do everything I can to restore security to our cities,” she said.

The rape was filmed by someone in a flat overlooking the street and the attacker was arrested.

Police confirmed the arrest and said the man was being held while the investigation continued.

Meloni said on Facebook that her rivals had used the rape to attack her, ignoring the victim to avoid targeting what she called the immigration emergency.

She is running for office after current Prime Minister Mario Draghi announced he would resign after three parties in his government refused to support him in a confidence vote in July.

Recent polls showed she was ahead of her rivals with just over a month to go before the elections in Italy.