A landmark ruling has been made to relax Northern Ireland’s strict abortion laws this week.
Unlike other parts of the UK, the 1967 Abortion Act does not extend to Northern Ireland, where abortions are banned except where the life or mental health of the mother is in question.
Until now, anyone who performed an illegal abortion could face life in prison.
The challenge was brought by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, which demands access to terminations in cases of rape, incest or fatal foetal abnormality.
Judge Mr Justice Mark Horner told Belfast High Court: “I conclude that the Article Eight rights of women in Northern Ireland who are pregnant with fatal foetal abnormalities or who are pregnant as a result of sexual crime are breached by the impugned provisions.”
In cases of fatal foetal abnormality, the judge concluded the mother’s inability to access an abortion was a “gross interference with her personal autonomy”.
He said: “In the case of an FFA there is no life to protect. When the foetus leaves the womb, it cannot survive independently. It is doomed. There is no life to protect.”
The judge also said that current laws were grossly unfair to victims of sexual crime:
“She has to face all the dangers and problems, emotional or otherwise, of carrying a foetus for which she bears no moral responsibility and is merely a receptacle to carry the child of a rapist and/or a person who has committed incest, or both.
“In doing so the law is enforcing prohibition of abortion against an innocent victim of a crime in a way which completely ignores the personal circumstances of the victim.”
Human Rights Commission Chief Commissioner Les Allamby said: Today’s result is historic, and will be welcomed by many of the vulnerable women and girls who have been faced with these situations.”
Read our piece in support of Repeal the 8th here.
