In this blog series I am going to attempt to untangle the complex and largely misunderstood changes in the abortion regime in Northern Ireland, so that you are left as informed as possible about this dynamic situation.
As many will be aware, the current Assembly mandate has borne witness to the most radical changes to the abortion laws in Northern Ireland. We have gone from having laws that protect and affirm life to having some of the most permissive abortion laws in Europe.
But how did this happen and what does it mean in practice?
In 2019 during the Assembly collapse, Westminster introduced the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc.) Act. Section 9 of the Act introduced two key changes to the laws on abortion:
- It decriminalises abortion in Northern Ireland;
- It placed the UK Government under a duty to introduce a new legal framework for abortion in NI by 31st March 2020
This Act was followed by the Abortion (Northern Ireland) 2020 Regulations. Through these Regulations women can now legally abort a baby up to 12 weeks gestation for any reason; up to 24 weeks on mental health grounds and; women can now seek a termination without a gestational limit in the case where the baby would be born with a serve fetal impairment, this would include babies born with Down’s syndrome; cleft palate and club foot. However, this situation remains unclear and unresolved as the 2020 Regulations stated that it was up to Stormont’s Department of Health to commission full abortion services and the NI Assembly failed to meet the 31st March 2020 deadline.
This failure resulted in the Secretary of State laying before Parliament the Abortion (Northern Ireland) 2021 Regulations. These Regulations placed additional pressure on the Northern Ireland Executive to commission abortion services consistent with the conditions set out in the 2020 Regulations that provided a new legal framework for access to abortion in NI. The 2021 Regulations gave the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland the power to direct relevant NI Ministers, departments, and relevant health bodies to commission abortion services.
In July 2021 Westminster issued a formal direction to Stormont’s Department of Health to set up full abortion services in Northern Ireland by no later than March 2022. Once again, the NI Assembly have failed to meet this deadline, so last week the UK Government announced its intention to prepare work on further regulations to ensure abortion services are available in Northern Ireland.
In a Ministerial Statement Brandon Lewis outlined the legislative options being explored by the UK Government. These may include making regulations and directions that will:
- place a duty on the Department of Health to make abortion services available as soon as is reasonably practicable;
- remove the need for Executive Committee approval before services can be commissioned and funded and
- confer on the Secretary of State’s power to do anything that a Northern Ireland Minister or department could do for the purpose of ensuring that the recommendations in paragraphs 85 and 86 of the CEDAW report are implemented.
The commissioning of abortion services and wider abortion related issues are going to continue to be raised in the next mandate and now more than ever we need to elect MLAs who will hold the line and uphold the sanity of life. // Rebecca Stevenson (CARE NI Policy Officer)
