DUP Proposes Anti-Abortion Bill
The most recent legislative move towards fully-legalised abortion in Northern Ireland was hailed as a progressive step for women’s rights. Yet, not even a year after its passage in 2020, an attempt to stall and even reverse this progress has been made by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), who are once again seeking to amend the law.
The significant changes passed last year include allowing terminations in all circumstances up to 12 weeks, with no limit in cases of fatal fetal abnormalities or where the child would suffer a severe mental or physical impairment if born. Now, the private members bill brought by DUP member Paul Givan is calling for abortions to be disallowed in instances of non-fatal disabilities, such as Down’s Syndrome and cerebral palsy.
Historically, and evidently even today, abortion has been a divisive issue in the most religious region of the UK. The Abortion Act of 1967 legalised abortions up to 28 weeks on specified grounds by registered medcal practitioners in Great Britain, but fell shy of extending this to Northern Ireland. As recently as 2000, the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont passed a motion opposing an extension of the Act, putting an end to the brewing discussion on whether the opportunity to make progressive change would be seized. Even when Westminster devolved abortion policy to Stormont in 2010, most political parties at Stormont still opposed amending the country’s laws to bring them in line with the rest of Great Britain.
After Marie Stopes—today, MSI Reproductive Choices—opened the first private clinic to offer abortions in Belfast in 2012, the DUP was involved in a bid to ban abortions being performed by such clinics. However, this was effectively blocked by a majority of the Assembly, sparking more intense pro-choice campaigning.
The case of Sarah Ewart, who travelled from Northern Ireland to England in October 2013 for an abortion after being told her baby would not survive outside the womb, is well-known and was a turning point in drawing international attention to the issue. Since then, following various court rulings and the collapse of the Northern Irish government in 2017, it was only after a motion to decriminalise abortion was carried by 332 votes to 99 by MPs at Westminster in July 2019 that changes to law began to be put into motion. As a result, in March 2020, the Northern Ireland Office finally published details of its new legal framework for abortion services.
“in March 2020, the Northern Ireland Office finally published details of its new legal framework for abortion services.”
While this might have been a celebrated success, the fact that this ability was originally accorded as a devolved power and had now been informally rescinded by Westminster helps to explain why the beliefs of the government in Northern Ireland still do not reflect these changes. However, this does not detract from the relief that greater access to abortion provided to millions of women in Northern Ireland - in the wake of these legal changes, there was a sharp increase in abortions, with 1,091 abortions recorded between March 2020 and February 2021.
The importance of legislative action is exemplified by how the fundamental right of a woman to decide what she does with her body is still not always accepted. The changes enacted in 2020 were the result of various court decisions and even a UN committee report from February 2018 stating that the UK had been breaching the rights of Northern Irish women by limiting their access to abortion services. This is arguably a reflection of the regressive influence that a renewed global shift towards socially conservative politics is having on the lives of ordinary citizens.
While the reproductive autonomy of women has always been infringed on by ‘pale, stale and male’ law-makers, the sexist rhetoric popularised by Trump on his 2016 campaign trail did a lot to normalise such vitriol. More directly, the DUP’s latest ambitions seem to take inspiration from Poland, another country in which the line separating church and state is blurred. The Polish Constitutional Court ruled against a law allowing abortion in instances of severe foetal abnormalities, issuing a near-total abortion ban in January earlier this year. Similar to the plight in Ireland, a large majority of the Polish population opposes these decisions.
Mr Givan’s bill is still making its way through the legislative process at Stormont, and requires the support of a majority of Assembly members to progress to the next stage. As it stands, its success is not particularly likely—but the proposal has already done much to reflect the prevailing conservative attitudes in Northern Ireland and its government despite some apparently progressive moves.