Northern Ireland Politicians Reject Bid to Relax 'Profoundly Awful' Abortion Ban

A proposal to legalize abortion in cases of sex crime or where the fetus cannot survive outside the womb (also known as fatal fetal abnormality) was rejected by 59 votes to 40 in the Northern Ireland Assembly last night.

"The government clearly don't trust women," Alliance for Choice chairperson Kellie O'Dowd tells Broadly. "In a religious place like Northern Ireland, the whole debate around the vote was set on the notion that women have sex and the assumption that they would lie about what happened if they got pregnant. It's not about women's health or autonomy over their lives, but personal belief."

Politicians were debating well past midnight whether the law in Northern Ireland should be changed to allow abortion in cases of rape, incest, or when an unborn child has a life-limiting condition. Unlike other parts of the United Kingdom, the 1967 Abortion Act does not apply this part of the country, which means abortions are banned in Northern Ireland except where the life or mental health of the mother is in danger. Anyone who performs an illegal termination in Northern Ireland could also be jailed for life.

"Northern Ireland is essentially where the rest of the UK was before the 1967 Act, and abortions were being performed before 1967 for women in certain circumstances under what is known as the Bourne judgment," explains Clare Murphy, the director of external affairs at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS). "This [was] after a doctor was tried and acquitted for ending the pregnancy of a 14 year old who had been raped. It was argued that the huge trauma the continuation of such a pregnancy would induce made it likely to be a grave risk to her."

"In NI today, that judgment still stands and abortions can be performed where the life and mental health of the mother is at grave risk. But they are not because of the hugely chilling effect created by politicians—and so healthcare professionals are terrified of being prosecuted. The fact that these amendments have now been defeated will only add to that sense of fear."

The debate comes after a High Court ruling last year that concluded a mother's inability to access abortion in cases of fatal fetal abnormality was a "gross interference with her personal autonomy."

"The recent case taken by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission found that the current law on abortion in Northern Ireland breached Article 8 of the European Human Rights Convention, but the ruling has put Stormont [the Northern Irish parliament] in charge of changing the law," O'Dowd says. "The result today means that women and their representatives must go back to the courts in order to have this fundamental human right—the right to access abortion services—in their own country."

Proposals to relax current abortion laws were tabled by the Alliance Party MLAs Stewart Dickson and Trevor Lunn, who accused their opponents of lacking compassion. During the debate, Lunn choked back tears as he recalled having to make the "painful" decision to access a termination because of a fatal fetal abnormality many years ago.

"This is important. It is important to women and to men and it is important for the self respect of this little country," he said. "Sooner or later we are going to have to do something about it."

Despite these signs of support, the outcome was fairly predictable after early indications that the Democratic Unionists and SDLP political parties would not support the changes. Ahead of the debate, Chief Legal Advisor and Attorney General John Larkin QC also raised concerns in a letter that changing the law on fatal fetal abnormality could breach obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). Amnesty International criticized Larkin's move, saying the comments "conflate disability with fatal fetal impairment" and are "misleading."

Polling company Millward Brown Ulster surveyed 1,013 people in October 2014 and found that 60 percent of people believed that abortion should be legal in cases where the foetus has a fatal abnormality. Sixty-nine percent also thought that abortion should be made available when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

WATCH: 'The Abortion Pill,' our documentary about how non-surgical, medical abortion is harder to access than ever.

With no access to safe abortion services, Northern Irish women have been travelling to the rest of the UK for abortions since the 60s. In 2012 alone, almost a thousand Northern Irish women had terminations in England and Wales. In addition, an unknown number of women end their pregnancies by sourcing abortion pills online from suppliers such as Women on Waves. The veto of the amendment will mean these trends are expected to continue.

Pro-choice campaigners like O'Dowd fear that this will only create even more of a socio-economic divide between women who have the financial means to travel for abortions performed at private clinics and those who cannot. "Not every woman can afford to travel to England to have an abortion," she says. "The total cost is worth around £600 to £1200, as Northern Irish women don't have the same rights as those in the rest of the United Kingdom who can access free abortions through the National Health Service."

This is only going to further create a class structure. The vote tonight was totally political, and not about the rights every woman should have; the politicians are more concerned about the election of the Northern Ireland Assembly coming up in May."

Murphy shares a similar concern. "One of the things to bear in mind here—and what makes it even more profoundly awful—is that women in the very distressing circumstances addressed in these amendments should already be covered by the existing legislation," she says.

"No civilized society should deny women access to abortion, full stop. That politicians in a part of the UK today think they are taking the moral high ground by denying abortions to women carrying pregnancies where the baby has no chance of survival, ‎or where a woman has been raped, is utterly warped. It is quite simply shameful."