An unwanted pregnancy is a distressing experience under the best of circumstances. For a woman living in Northern Ireland, however, its consequences are much more uncertain and traumatic. Abortion, in Northern Ireland, is only legal under strictly limited circumstances: rape, incest, fatal foetal abnormality or fatal risk to the mother’s life. In all other cases, abortion is illegal, and carries a life sentence.
As of last year, Northern Irish women are able to have an abortion in Britain under the NHS. However, many can’t afford the financial and practical implications of travel, and resort instead to illegal pills bought online.
After pledging in their manifesto to ensure a woman’s right to safe and legal abortion, Labour MPs are in Belfast today to discuss reforming Northern Ireland’s current laws. The talks are being led by Shadow Secretary of State Owen Smith, and joint-hosted by sexual health charity FPA and Amnesty International.
Although part of the UK, devolved powers mean that Northern Ireland operates under its own laws in many areas. While it is hoped that reform of the abortion law can be implemented through Northern Ireland’s Parliament, campaigners are adamant that Westminster mustn’t shirk responsibility on this issue. ‘If power returns to Westminster’, says MP Owen Smith, ‘we will push the Government to make progress on ensuring people in Northern Ireland will have the same rights as those elsewhere in the United Kingdom’. Grainne Teggart, Northern Ireland Campaigns Manager for Amnesty International, reinforced this message: ‘devolution is no justification for the denial of women’s rights’, she argues, and ‘it does not relieve the UK Government of their responsibility to ensure that women’s right to abortion is upheld’.
It is frankly absurd that in 2018, a woman’s ability to make choices about her own body continue to be restricted by outdated laws which, as Ruari Rowan of the FPA points out, were ‘decided by an all-male parliament’ and ‘voted for by an all-male electorate’. ‘As we mark the centenary of the suffrage of some women’, she adds, ‘in Northern Ireland women continue to suffer daily discrimination under the Victorian legislation that controls their bodies’.
Hopefully, today’s talks will mark a step forward in reforming an antiquated and patriarchal legal system that should have been amended long ago.
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.