You probably know them. And if you do not, you know someone who does. The woman who is the victim of rape resulting in pregnancy. The child who, if the pregnancy continues, will find himself “with child”.
he woman, beaten, who feels they have no opportunity to go but who does not want to introduce a baby in an insecure relationship. The woman, who has had too much to drink the night before, has ended up in bed with someone else and will not have used protection. It happens. The couple, who very much want a child but are diagnosed with severe fetal disability, have a difficult decision to make.
There are few problems in Northern Ireland that go beyond traditional lines for Catholics, Protestants and others in the way abortion does. It awakens the judgmental, the compassionate, the absolute on both sides, those who have a deep religious conviction on the issue, and those who do not necessarily agree but understand the reasons for the decisions made.
We all have an opinion. And we all have a right to them, even if for those who are actually facing a crisis pregnancy, it makes it much harder to get a verdict on you.
It is a desperate place to be to be in a position where due to lack of availability of services you are forced to consider taking a brace for your own body or swallowing pills that you have got on the internet.
That’s the reality – as it gets postponed to rationally discuss options with healthcare professionals to be able to make a safe decision when you run a glove of protesters on their way in and wave pictures of fetuses in your face.
Due to diversity of views and with an eye to election, politicians have not yet addressed the issue significantly, despite the guidelines to amend the NI Act to provide abortion, cemented after the Creasy amendment in 2019.
And then we have had trial after trial, as women both for and against abortion have argued for legality and been sentenced – inside and outside the pitch.
Come forward British Foreign Secretary Brandon Lewis, who has written to the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister declaring that he “would have no choice but to take further steps to ensure that women and girls have access to abortion services as decided by Parliament. ” and to which they are entitled ”.
The letter, written after a High Court ruling by Justice Colton earlier this month, found that Lewis had failed to give women access to “high-quality abortion and post-abortion care in all public facilities in Northern Ireland”, was a card mark. for Stormont, and was conveniently leaked, as politicians do, to make one side seem to do something while highlighting another’s passivity.
It also highlighted the hypocrisy of unionists who want to stay united with Britain in all but the extension of providing the same access to health care to NI women as their English counterparts, and likewise Republicans who want to sever ties with England have not a problem. with leaving the responsibility to them to legislate in Westminster for us because they do not have the means to do so.
While the DUP stance has at least been consistent in denying abortion, the Sinn Féin stance has changed with the wind. In 2012, Martin
McGuinness stated: “We have had a very consistent position over the years. Sinn Féin is not in favor of abortion …”
Fast forward to 2017, when the campaign started on the Repeal of the 8th Amendment in the Republic, and Bernadette McAliskey delivered a withering public message to Mary Lou McDonald, whose party at the time was extremely quiet on the issue.
“I have a message for you Mary Lou,” McAliskey thundered. “You’d better stand absolutely and unequivocally behind the campaign to repeal … otherwise your backside will never sit on Taoiseach’s bench.”
A year later, McDonald’s threw sound bites out like confetti about “trust in women”.
Last week, Sinn Féin abstained in a vote in the Stormont Health Committee on a DUP bill seeking to change the law to restrict access to abortion for those with a serious fetal abnormality diagnosis, even though they have since welcomed the Lewis letter.
The SDLP also abstained, leaving them with more splinters from sitting on the fence than the Alliance party traditionally has in question, even though their representative voted against the bill along with People before Profit.
Last year, 371 women traveled from NI to England to have an abortion – a marked decrease compared to the 2019 figure of 1014 due to Covid travel restrictions or the 22 performed at home. Clearly, just because women do not have full access to abortions, does not mean they do not get them.
The British Pregnancy Advisory Service estimates that every third woman in the UK has had an abortion by the age of 45. – a sober statistic, but when examined, most of these are at a very early stage of conception. In 2020, 88 per cent. of the abortions performed under 10 weeks.
Politicians have a responsibility as legislators to make tough decisions, but it is also imperative that they abide by the law, no matter how incompatible they may find it with their own personal views. Leaving trouble until Westminster has to intervene is a mockery of decentralization and is a coward.
Like it or not, access to abortion is now legal in Northern Ireland, although it is not fully available. Stormont should stop forcing women facing desperate decisions to travel as well. These are our citizens. We need to stop treating them as if they are someone else’s problem.
